Every day and in every way, Life sets out to get me. It is hard not to be cynical when the little vicissitudes of everyday existence prove so troublesome.
Take the simple act of buying a new pair of trainers. Now, I know if I were to be true to my upbringing I should refer to them as ‘daps’ a word which was common in my youth and now, at least in Cardiff, seems like a word as archaic as the phrase ‘considerate bank.’ I suppose that, even in my youth, there would have been a differentiation made between ‘sports shoes’ and ‘daps.’ Sports shoes would have been white and probably Dunlop Red Flash – I cannot really remember other sports shoes; that was the choice available! While ‘daps’ would have been black with particularly cheap moulded hard plastic soles.
Any parent reading the above must sigh with bitter nostalgia at the halcyon days when children would have been satisfied with a no-choice, inexpensive pair of sports shoes. Now their brand-savvy, finger-snapping, instant-gratification demanding offspring expect ‘trainers’ with correct logos, coloured laces, fluorescent insoles, built-in mp3 players, micro-chip-air-adjusted features and platinum eyelets which cost the same as a small terraced house in the Rhondda.
Alas my sarcasm is so slow footed that, since I ended that last sentence and ventured out into the wide world, a poster in my own dear Rumney is advertising a more advanced sports shoe which now automatically adjusts itself with each step that the wearer takes incorporating with what looks like a volume control built into the side of the sole. I have not had the audacity to find the shoe on the internet as I would probably become inarticulate with rage at the grossly inflated and that would never do when writing a blog! How quickly fantast is outstripped by what passes for reality nowadays!
Take the simple act of buying a new pair of trainers. Now, I know if I were to be true to my upbringing I should refer to them as ‘daps’ a word which was common in my youth and now, at least in Cardiff, seems like a word as archaic as the phrase ‘considerate bank.’ I suppose that, even in my youth, there would have been a differentiation made between ‘sports shoes’ and ‘daps.’ Sports shoes would have been white and probably Dunlop Red Flash – I cannot really remember other sports shoes; that was the choice available! While ‘daps’ would have been black with particularly cheap moulded hard plastic soles.
Any parent reading the above must sigh with bitter nostalgia at the halcyon days when children would have been satisfied with a no-choice, inexpensive pair of sports shoes. Now their brand-savvy, finger-snapping, instant-gratification demanding offspring expect ‘trainers’ with correct logos, coloured laces, fluorescent insoles, built-in mp3 players, micro-chip-air-adjusted features and platinum eyelets which cost the same as a small terraced house in the Rhondda.
Alas my sarcasm is so slow footed that, since I ended that last sentence and ventured out into the wide world, a poster in my own dear Rumney is advertising a more advanced sports shoe which now automatically adjusts itself with each step that the wearer takes incorporating with what looks like a volume control built into the side of the sole. I have not had the audacity to find the shoe on the internet as I would probably become inarticulate with rage at the grossly inflated and that would never do when writing a blog! How quickly fantast is outstripped by what passes for reality nowadays!
I excoriate the cynical exploitative commercial approach of trainer manufacturers who produce over priced fashion articles with gimmicky extras.
However. Yesterday on a trip to McArthur and Glen as Toni will have it and an unwholesome rush through the shops (remember Toni was there as well) produced little that was buyable. I was not, as usual, allowed to linger but we did make a resentful visit to the Nike shop. This is usually a fruitless expedition but yesterday, as I needed sports socks which did not act as tourniquets around the ankles, it was a worthwhile diversion. It was then that Toni saw them: things from the outer reaches of fantasy, fabulous, unobtainable.
Nike Air 360! Retailing for £130! Sports shoes for the professional, or the rich, or the insistent! Playthings for chavs and those with more money than sense.
But at £30 a pop, up or grabs, I think!
So grab we did, luxuriating in the idiocy of the really rich and stupid who had stopped buying these masterpieces of air technology (hollow soles and heels) because in small embroidered print along the line of the eyelets on the shoes was the crucifyingly embarrassing information ‘2 0 0 6’; last year’s model by three months and therefore something in which the discerningly mindless dresser would not be seen dead. Undiscerning fashion necrophiliacs like Toni and my good self rejoice in the leavings of the pretentious and spendthrift poseurs who bring the unobtainable to the levels of reasonableness that tempt even an old skinflint like myself. It’s not that I’m mean, but memories of what one used to pay for these shoes (which seemed at the time to be more than adequate) indicate that even £30 is grossly overpriced.
Toni was much pleased with his purchase and paraded in a frankly insulting manner in front of me, asking with affected concern how my shoes were feeling. The reason for this unreasonable behaviour was that the shop assistant had neglected to remove the security tag from the tongue (?) off one of the shoes.
I have a morbid middle class fear of the security tag. This is partly base on wearing a new pair of trousers on holiday and virtually having to strip before I managed to get through the security machine at the airport going out. A later trip, during the same holiday, to El Corte Ingles in Barcelona was less fortunate when I set off the exit security system and had to be taken to a ‘little room’ for security checking. It eventually turned out that my trousers still had a small raised self-adhesive plastic strip which activated the alarm. A very understanding security guard explained in Catalan to a Toni transfixed with embarrassment that it was quite common and have a good day and all that.
There’s also the fear (urban myth) of the exploding security tag. I understood that not only did security tags have some sort of radio transmitter secreted somewhere in their plastic construction but that they also had a ampoule of indelible ink inside which would break if unauthorized tampering occurred and stain garment and unhallowed hand.
I think that I had visions of some sci-fi scenario acting itself out with the liquid spraying itself towards the miscreant who had absconded with a tagged garment and where the liquid landed the skin and flesh would dissolve, bony fingers clutching at flesh denuded face and everything stained a fluorescent purple. Or something.
However. Yesterday on a trip to McArthur and Glen as Toni will have it and an unwholesome rush through the shops (remember Toni was there as well) produced little that was buyable. I was not, as usual, allowed to linger but we did make a resentful visit to the Nike shop. This is usually a fruitless expedition but yesterday, as I needed sports socks which did not act as tourniquets around the ankles, it was a worthwhile diversion. It was then that Toni saw them: things from the outer reaches of fantasy, fabulous, unobtainable.
Nike Air 360! Retailing for £130! Sports shoes for the professional, or the rich, or the insistent! Playthings for chavs and those with more money than sense.
But at £30 a pop, up or grabs, I think!
So grab we did, luxuriating in the idiocy of the really rich and stupid who had stopped buying these masterpieces of air technology (hollow soles and heels) because in small embroidered print along the line of the eyelets on the shoes was the crucifyingly embarrassing information ‘2 0 0 6’; last year’s model by three months and therefore something in which the discerningly mindless dresser would not be seen dead. Undiscerning fashion necrophiliacs like Toni and my good self rejoice in the leavings of the pretentious and spendthrift poseurs who bring the unobtainable to the levels of reasonableness that tempt even an old skinflint like myself. It’s not that I’m mean, but memories of what one used to pay for these shoes (which seemed at the time to be more than adequate) indicate that even £30 is grossly overpriced.
Toni was much pleased with his purchase and paraded in a frankly insulting manner in front of me, asking with affected concern how my shoes were feeling. The reason for this unreasonable behaviour was that the shop assistant had neglected to remove the security tag from the tongue (?) off one of the shoes.
I have a morbid middle class fear of the security tag. This is partly base on wearing a new pair of trousers on holiday and virtually having to strip before I managed to get through the security machine at the airport going out. A later trip, during the same holiday, to El Corte Ingles in Barcelona was less fortunate when I set off the exit security system and had to be taken to a ‘little room’ for security checking. It eventually turned out that my trousers still had a small raised self-adhesive plastic strip which activated the alarm. A very understanding security guard explained in Catalan to a Toni transfixed with embarrassment that it was quite common and have a good day and all that.There’s also the fear (urban myth) of the exploding security tag. I understood that not only did security tags have some sort of radio transmitter secreted somewhere in their plastic construction but that they also had a ampoule of indelible ink inside which would break if unauthorized tampering occurred and stain garment and unhallowed hand.
I think that I had visions of some sci-fi scenario acting itself out with the liquid spraying itself towards the miscreant who had absconded with a tagged garment and where the liquid landed the skin and flesh would dissolve, bony fingers clutching at flesh denuded face and everything stained a fluorescent purple. Or something.
Anyway, I don’t mess with tags so I was prepared to accept a 33% reduction if I brought it back for removal. Not one of my best negotiations which I later had criticised in detail by Toni – the Great Complainer (ha!)
Tomorrow an interesting interview.
We shall see.
We shall see.
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