Slippery Socks

Slippery socks. If I was of a class that warranted a valet, that would be one of my requirements each morning. At best I would insist on brand new ones or maybe some delicately crafted in silk; I’ve never tried them but they sound ideal. At worst, I’d want socks that had been pre-worn so that they slip on the feet with ease; second-day socks, it you like, pre-stretched and rid of their post-wash stiffness. Socks that just glide on rather than stubbornly resisting their destiny as the intimate cushion between skin and shoe.

I suppose this is yet one more irritation that comes with age. Your extremities become more remote, more dependent and more demanding. I think this is particularly true of feet. They become wilfully malcontent, unprepared to serve just as useful terminations to your legs. They constantly beg for attention, no longer shrugging off the predations of ill-fitting shoes or laughing in the face of in-growing toenails. If your body has thickened with age, developing impediments to bending as mine has, feet seem to belong to another country, an exotic land of corn and fungus, where bed-posts leap out to molest toes and boots, which once fitted like soft, kid gloves, now rasp and chafe. They fight back. And you lose.

Until, with barely a whisper of discontent, you enter the age of woolly, fleece-lined slippers.

No images of footwear. Instead, an old gin distillery in east London. With its products both you and your feet could drink to forget. With enough swilled, your head and your feet may even reach the same level.