Shoes

Shoes
(in a museum of Resistance and Nazi memorabilia)

Way-worn by Oslo
one Sunday afternoon
our feet sought out
a museum's gentler pace:

a museum of shoes,
regiments and regiments
in row on neat row
of children's shoes,
removed and set down in and orderly manner
before the little ones were gassed of an afternoon.

So bereft of meaning are shoes without feet.

Stout little shoes,
shoes with laces and hardly worn -
unsplashed through puddles,
unscuffed against bark,
not a toecap grazed to bewail a fall,
no leather creased into durable smiles
by the deft percussion of tiny soles;
shoes hinting of
just-beginning-to-walk.

And that's how
there erupted this blister -
through bearing witness
one Sunday afternoon
to a people and the manner
they met their end
so noiselessly
in their stockinged feet.

By Menna Elfyn, translated from the Welsh by Nigel Jenkins

Reproduced after viewing the Poor Mouth's photo here.

Forever Wales

I am tottering around the house on my shoes. I seem to have forgotten how to walk. I need to remove my shoes, remind myself how to walk and try again. As it is, if there should be a fire in the hotel and it's a case of run or be burned, I'll have to settle for the hot flames. But I'll look damn good. Just so long as long as I don't have to move. I'll have to settle for a dramatic wave of the arms and some memorable final words. "If I should die, think only this of me: that there's some corner of a foreign field that is for ever Wales." (What do you mean, 'that sounds familiar'?)

My cold seems slightly worse than it did yesterday when it was showing signs of disappearing. I wonder if the red onion soup is meant to draw it out; perhaps I have to get worse before I get better.

But all that is sounding very gloomy when I am not at all. Excited and happy would be a better description.

Oh, yes, and Husband has won a hamper in the guide dogs Spring raffle! Twice a year they send me books of tickets to sell and I end up buying them myself because I am too pathetic to send them back unsold. I have probably paid for the equivalent of several hampers but that's not the point. This is 'free' and a pleasant surprise - especially as I never win anything. (Although I did win a custom-made surfboard in the first raffle held by the Gower Surf Club in 19blurby blurby blurb.)

Too many toes

So I've got some shoes.

I'm not convinced but they're the best I'm going to get. I shall wear them round the house for the next two days to wear them in - should I plaster my toes first to pre-empt any rubbing? - and to get used to them - I never wear high heels so am likely to break an ankle.

Unlike the majority of women - judging by the responses I got to my cold/shoes post - I don't like shopping for shoes. I love the idea of glamorous sexy high heels but I have ugly feet.

With an extra toe on my left foot, it's always been difficult to get shoes to fit. As a child I had to have the extra-wide fitting of what were, inevitably, dull shoes, and as an adult, the world of pointy-toed or even slimfit elegant shoes is a closed one to me.

'Sensible' shoes. I don't want sensible shoes; I want the sort of shoes from which men drink champagne not Brains Bitter.

Sympathy, please!

Elder Son's wedding is next Saturday. That's five days away. I am currently sneezing for Wales and could confuse a hedgehog with my snuffling. I'm also hot and cold and coughing ... but it will be fine! I will be better by then; I am confident.

Of course I might not have any shoes to wear ...

xxx