[John Whitworth]

He wanted new styles of architecture. Except that, as he confessed later, he didn't. New shoes is less problematic. Actually, though I knew I had pinched the phrase, I had forgotten it was from Wystan. As you say, Bazza, steal only the best. I'm of to shoplift a fifteen-year-old malt from Waitrose.

[Ann Drysdale]

Shamelessly trading on your passing similarity to Anthony Worrall Thompson?

[John Whitworth]

He did cheese and other people's wives. I don't do either. And, hell, I' m MUCH better looking than the culinary dwarf.

[Ann Drysdale]

Of course you are - but an upturned collar and a quick scuttle past the cctv would convince all but the fellow's immediate family. I'm only trying to be helpful...

[John Whitworth]

You are always helpful, Ann.

[Terese Coe]

...It's time for us to part.
If we should meet again as more and more
I think, or rather know, that we shall not,


To die for, John!

And I mean that in the way of praise.

[FOsen]

Hi, I’m Vi, this is Guy and that’s George and Lorraine,
We've some words of advice you might heed to your gain;
We're the Fissures of Soles, and we think you could do
With some polishing up and become our New Shoe.

We would so like to help you get up on your toes,
Lose that crud at your heels and those moth-eaten hose.
If New Shoes hold their tongues and sport showier laces,
They'll soon find they're taken to all the right places.

And New Shoes, once they're burnished and thoroughly shined,
May discover they're paired off with something refined.
A New Shoe who can take some hard use and bad weather,
Mind its uppers, not squeak, why, that's our kind of leather.

But a shoe that won't fit or be comfortably broken
Or coordinate well with the better bespoken,
That New Shoe will soon find that it's out of our set—
And that we haven't trod on it properly yet.

[Martin Parker]

(A piece of autobiog. from circa 1949. Sadly, the highly radioactive machines referred to were banned years ago -- even before the days of Health and Safety! But they may explain why a friend of mine claims to have webbed feet and hair between his toes.)

New Shoes

New shoes for school, at least four pairs a year
of stout black lace-ups; and extremely dear
at seventeen-and-six my mother thought
for feet which grew much faster than feet ought.
Shoes bought so large they scarcely touched most places
no matter quite how hard she yanked the laces
and packed each gap uncomfortably full
with insoles, thicker socks and cotton wool.

At last, to prove my point, we’d peer at those
small, wriggling skeletons inside my toes,
cavorting with at least an inch to spare
in shoes near large enough for two to share,
beneath us on the green, fluorescent screen
of Harrod’s X-ray “Check-Your-Fit” machine --
which left my mother with the false but firm
belief the shoes would last me one whole Term.

[Jerome Betts]

Thank you, Martin. Only in occasional four o'clock in the morning moments had I recalled until now those apparently helpful devices, not just in Harrod's but deep in the sticks, so casually accepted at the time but probably leaking untold mischief all over the shop. There must be a medical thesis there for somebody.

[Jayne Osborn]

My mum used to buy all my school shoes and sandals from a posh shop called 'Lotus' (were they a chain?) and I always delighted in standing on the 'X-ray machine' to see how much room there was, to grow into.

Heck! It's a miracle I'm still here! Mind you, I do glow in the dark...