Rebecca

The Moon Boots

Click went the door and off they went, my moon boots. Slapping and sliding across the cold, frosty pavements. A great effort was required to lift them off the ground for each step as they were soft, and heavy, like twin hippos wallowing in the mud. Like my fashion sense at the time, they never got that far off the ground. A perfect accompaniment to my green sparkly tutu, my moon boots were large solid black blocks, not so much supporting my feet but surrounding them and wobbling around my ankles as I walked. They were hard work to walk in frankly, but ease was not the point of them.

My husband often talks about his captivating father who owned a strip club in Blackpool. He had hair which he set in curlers every evening, and had steel plates specially attached to the bottom of his shoes so that they had a very distinctive “click” as he walked. Nobody ever missed his entrance into a room. Was that the purpose of my heavy, dumpy, outrageous moon boots? They certainly evoked a reaction; strangers raised eyebrows, a creased half smile of amusement, my mothers agitated knitted eyebrows forever wondering why my feet hadn’t followed in her own classy, elegant, high heeled footsteps.

Mysteriously, one summer holidays when I was at home from university, my moon boots disappeared. I suspect my mother’s’ hand in their untimely end. By then, they had seen their day, announced many an entrance to night club and lecture, and enhanced my calf muscle tone no end by being schlepped up and down the steep hills of Exeter university campus. The soles, now sad and floppy were starting to part ways with the chunky tops, drumming away like flaccid fingers on the ground as I went.

They featured in my husband’s’ wedding speech, those precious moon boots of mine. Describing a wife, flouncing around in her bizarre get up and strange heavy shoes. The funny, intriguing, clumsiness of them disarming any shyness amongst two strangers, soon to be inseparable. If they had been elegant high heels, they would no doubt have been forgotten in an instant. 5