St Mary's October 2018 Parish Magazine

In My Day
the ramblings of Hubert James
In
my day about this time of year that
folks feet would start to play up. You
know, when the weather started to
get changeable.
Course, it didn’t help that shoes were
generally ill fitting. Not because they
were poorly made, they weren’t but
feet had a tendency to grow
especially at times when pockets
were empty.
We all knew they grew in the summer
and more often than not they had to
be squeezed back into last terms
school shoes come September until
funds could be found for new ones.
Aching feet really came into their own
when fashion got involved.
I seem to remember that it began with
an Italian knife seller who lived along
Thrapston Road. He took up with a
young lady from the Co-op. Now it 13
happened that he was very tall and
she very short.
He came up with the idea of attaching
thin blades from his knives to her
shoes to make her taller. He
persuaded her that it improved the
look of her calves and bingo, stilettos
were born. Trouble was they shoved
everything forward leaving your toes
a crunched up mangled mess at the
front of your shoe. And that’s when
bunions and corns started to multiply.
At first it was just the women who
suffered but then a cool young
apprentice at the shoe factory found
himself at a loose end in the design
room with a pencil and paper.
It happened that an eager young
under manager spotted his doodles
and decided the design was just what
the hip dudes of the town needed.
The apprentice was called Henry
Winkle and because the blokes all
found themselves trying to squeeze
their big flat feet into the pointy wedge
that was the toe of a Winkle Picker.
From that moment on chiropodists
had a job for life and corn plasters
were quoted on the Stock Exchange.
And we all complain about our feet.
Some say there is no greater pain
than a corn.
Local writer Congo Reeve summed it
up in a line from his play; The
Morning Bride, “Heaven has no rage
like love to hatred turned nor Hell no
fury like a women’s corns.”