I’ve been looking for a couple of months new for a new pair of shoes. My work shoes failed a while back – the uppers split at the back from the heel. I tried to get them repaired but was told it wouldn’t really be possible to do. I wasn’t overly surprised, as although the split was clean, it was a bad place.
Since then I’ve been trying pretty much every shoe shop I can find. I remember when a town would have quite a few shoe shops – a major chain, a manufacturer store (Clarks usually) and a local independant. Nowadays that’s changed. Here at least, there’s Brantano, who are usually very good, but they don’t have anything I either like, that fits me, or is comfortable. Clarks have been hopeless, and the other option sells shoes that are so cheap they aren’t worth buying. I’ve been, admittedly, very picky about what I want – round-toed, chunky soles with a nice deep tread, and a decent support round the ankle. Very few places seem to have anything that really fits that requirement very well. I’ve tried here, High Wycombe and Milton Keynes, and found next to nothing so far. The closest I got was Barratts in Milton Keynes, but they were out of stock of my size.
I seem to be in a difficult size bracket. My feet are size 12 (UK size). Most places stock massive amounts of size 8 – 11, but 12 is usually very sparse. Clarks have next to nothing in size 12. The usual ‘oversize’ stockists tend to carry size 13 and above, as you can get 12s in ‘normal’ shops. It appears that size 12 is just on the edge of the mainstream sizes, and so hardly anybody seems interested in stocking it in great volumes.
So here I am, still sans-shoe, and getting increasingly frustrated with it all. I’ve emailed Barratts, as their website is useless, but I know their shop had what I wanted. Here’s hoping!
You should think your self lucky. In my day, all we had was a bit of cardboard with 2 elastic bands!