Home life
Foot fault
Alice Thomas Ellis
Ibought some comfortable shoes the other day: white moccasin-type things with fringed tongues, and flat as a pancake. Alfie hates them to such an extent that he has become quite unbalanced on the sub- ject. Whenever we meet his eyes go straight to my feet and, should I happen to be wearing them, he starts clawing at the air and involving the Deity. 'You look like a Third World person,' he says. 'You look as though you'd found them on a tip where another Third World person had thrown them away. You look like a Peruvian,' he adds despairingly. He says the very sight of them makes him go all limp and leffargic and puts him off his lunch and the prospect of work and, by implication, the whole of the human race. Alfie is very sensitive. He sank to the floor the other day, moaning about my shoes. He says he wouldn't mind so much if they were only black and, if I would just go and buy a bottle of dye (he was too weak to move) he would paint them for me. I sometimes find people's hats unbearably annoying, but I can't remember shoes having this effect on me.
I'm still feeling pretty leffargic myself. I've been explaining to everyone that the cold was rendering me incapable of all forms of work, but when the sun came out last Sunday I didn't feel galvanised a bit. The other day, in the house of my friend the analyst, where I go to work, I was overwhelmed by weariness and went to sleep instead, sharing my couch with the cat Focus who, his master says, has to have a kip in the afternoon in order to get into shape for the night's sleep. But then all the cats I know get up at 5 a.m. and clump around wondering when the lazy bastards are going to wake and give them their breakfast. Cadders and Puss stand outside the bathroom going miaow and occasional- ly slapping and scratching at the door. Their importunity quite spoils one's con- centration as one lies in the bath plotting a novel and listening to Ken Bruce on the wireless. Sometimes a black snake-like paw insinuates itself under the door and you feel like someone in a James Bond movie where naked people are always being menaced by reptiles and tarantulas and odd-looking foreign chaps.
The daughter and I are taking an unpre- cedented Easter break and leaving the rest of the family to cook their own Easter bunny. We are going to Scotland and it has just dawned on me that this involves sitting in a car for 14 hours. I never recognise unpleasant facts until I can see the whites of their eyes, but this one is doing nothing for my metabolic rate. We are travelling over night and I'm tired already. What car games can one play with a child in total darkness? We shall have to tell jokes: `What do you call a nun with a washing machine on her head? 'Sister Matic."Why are elephants grey and wrinkled and huge?' Because if they were little and round and white they'd be aspirins.' She knows some very rude ones too but I'll spare you those. I have toyed with the idea of asking a vet for a few tranquillising darts but I suppose we will have to rely on a plentiful supply of Smarties. I do detest travelling.
We have been instructed to bring the minimum of luggage to the Isle of Arran since the car is alarmingly minute, and this means heart-rending decisions, together with shrewd predictions as to what the weather will be doing — always problema- tic at this time of year. Is it worse to have only tweeds and great hairy woollies while the sun beams from a cloudless sky, or only pretty little cotton frocks while the north- easterlies roar in from the ocean? One thing is sure. I'm taking my comfortable white shoes, and sucks to you, Alfie. PS: I shouldn't have written that, because Alfie has just walked in, peered under the table to ascertain what I've got on my feet and gone completely mad: 'Get those effing shoes off,' he said. 'They make you look like ten bob's worth down King's Cross.' Then he tore them from my feet and put them in the bin liner.
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