I studied my pair of trainers and considered the question – what do they remind me of? A lady on the radio said that hers reminded her of what she was capable of. Mine do not do that for me.

First they remind me of lockdown. These shoes were the pair that I wore during the first spring of the pandemic. We spent those months in the City in London, when that part of the capital was virtually deserted. On our daily walks we covered miles up and down the empty streets and along the Thames, with one of the few other sounds being the thudding footbeat of the occasional runners who passed us. We loved those walks, and since lockdown the habit of walking across London has stayed, but not in these trainers. They have been retired from that duty, and their place taken by a younger pair, better suited to the hard un-give of the pavements.

However, these particular trainers were not retired completely, and their next outing came immediately after lockdown when I decided to test them, and myself, on a longer rural walk – the Cotswold Way. The aim was to walk a hundred miles in a week, to raise money for the favourite charity of a friend who couldn’t do the walk herself. I thought it would be fine after all the miles done on London streets, but there were two big differences. First it was a hot week, and second, the Cotswold Way is very up and down. By the end of the Way I had blisters as big as bath plugs, plus the late learned knowledge that the trainers were too small for the walking socks I’d chosen.

So … what do these trainers remind me of? That I should never have bought the cheapest pairs of walking socks in the shop. If you’re ever in danger of making the same mistake, remember that you may well end up paying more for blister plasters than the good pairs of socks would have cost you in the first place.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023