Shoe fitters
If ever a medal was made for society's unsung heroes, the top of that list is not nurses, or public toilet cleaners – it has to be children's shoe fitters.
And their Battle of Britain has to be the manic last week of the summer holidays.
You can't really blame parents – buy shoes at the start of the seven-week break and they'll have grown out of them by they go back. Or if they really hate them, they'll climb trees and scrape them up walls in an attempt to wreck them (I know, I did this).
It's a ritual ordeal that I hate as a parent, as I've ranted about it many times in the past.
Luckily, Vanessa's at college and old enough to sort her own shoes out, so there's only Nick to worry about.
So we decided to bite the bullet and hit the shoe shops last Saturday, in an attempt to get the pain out of the way.
There is a certain shop, which shall remain nameless, that I have developed a pathological fear of entering.
You can't see the carpet for a writhing mass of kids, you can't hear the assistants because of the assorted screams and tantrums (and that's just the mothers).
Needless to say, we avoided there and headed for a certain well-known chain store.
Our hearts sank when there appeared to be a queue just to get a ticket for service.
For the uninitiated, buying kids' shoes at peak times bears a strong resemblance to shopping in a Soviet department store during the Cold War.
You take a ticket, point at the footwear you want and the assistant tells you there isn't any of that style and would you settle for a potato?
Luckily, there was an efficient commissar at the helm of our store, who assured everyone, clipboard in hand, that there was a full staff of fully-trained fitters on that day.
And she was right. We only had to wait about 15 minutes for our shoe angel to arrive.
OK, in that quarter of an hour, Nick managed to audibly describe a toddler as having a "disproportionate head", until I told him he looked like his had been inflated with a bicycle pump at that age – hence his nickname of the "Cannonball Kid" at 18 months.
There were also the cube-like seats you have to wait on – cue an uncomfortable encounter with one larger lady's builder's bottom, but hey... it could have been worse.
Our angel floated down and I presume, almost passed out once Nick had removed his trainers. After she recovered from the evil-smelling fug, he was fitted with a pair of "old faithful" size five regulation black leather school shoes – which we'd bought three times before.
So shoe-fitting angel, I salute you. I estimate in your eight-hour working day, at 10 minutes per child, that's 48 per day… 240 a week.
TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY pairs of stinking, smelly feet, attached to a bundle of tantrums / hormones / cheek.
Shoe fitters – you are truly the best of British!
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Friday 10 February 2012
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