These Boots Are Made For Walking

With summer just around the next corner it occurred to me that I really ought to get out and buy myself some new sandals. The ones I have, which I've been wearing for years, are just starting to get a bit ropey. The velcro straps are starting to wear and not stick, and the soles are wearing thin in places making them uncomfortable to walk in.

You won't catch me wearing anything like those silly flip-flop things. The idea that a rubber sole attached through your toes with a single strand of plastic is either comfortable, useful or even remotely looks fashionable is simply not an idea that I wish to adhere to. No, I prefer a nice pair of sturdy manly sandals that certainly don't make any flippy floppy slapping noises as you walk. If I wanted flip flops then I could simply walk down to any one of the many Chinese shops or seafront "bucket and spade" shops and buy a pair. But that really isn't the dominating issue. I have been in Portugal now for a while and therefore have previously had the need to go shoe shopping. And this is where it gets really really quite tricky. The inexorable fact of the matter is that your average Portuguese male clearly has much smaller feet than I have. Previously, when in need of some nice black comfortable office shoes for work, I have dutifully set out to the shopping centre, to trawl through the stacked boxes of shoes, scanning up and down... 35, 37, 41, 44, 45, another 45, 44 again, more 45's... looking, searching, desperately in vain for a size 47. Now and then I would stumble across a pair of size 46's, and with the taste of near victory on my lips, hope that just perhaps, they would be a large 46 and might fit. I did eventually find a pair of work shoes in the shopping centre at Sintra, but only after tediously scouring every single shoe shop within Cascais and Oeiras first.

It was with these memories in the forefront of my mind that I set out to Decathlon, a sports shop that also has a wide range of beach wear, sunglasses and the like, to try and get myself some new sandals. I had the foresight to ask my children to try on their sandals from last year and it was a good job I did, since it was immediately obvious from the many protruding toes that they also were in dire need of new sandals for the summer. I fully expected that finding new sandals for my children would be a breeze and that we would come away with me still wanting. But shock! And surprise! A plethora of sandals in all sizes up to and including 47! Fantastic result. I walked out of the shop with two pairs for me, a new pair for each of my children, a pair of flip flops for my daughter to wear in her school swimming lessons and, because I dropped my last pair, some new sunglasses for me. Oh, and a checkout receipt with some extraordinarily large numbers on it.

Now I have some shiny new sandals and the weather seems to have given up on the whole "rain, rain and more rain" thing, allowing me actually wear them. I'm happy. Next on the footwear list is going to be trainers. I'm hoping that I can get at least another summer out of the ones I have, but at least I know where to go to find some in my size!