Catching a break

It doesn’t happen often, but occasionally, if you’re very lucky, you can actually catch a break. And so I did, early in December.

As you must know, every woman (well, certainly this woman) needs a pair of black knee boots. They are one of life’s necessities.

The last pair I bought were from the Clarks shop in Oxford Street in April 2013. I had packed what I thought was April-appropriate footwear: a pair of dress shoes for my friend Irmani’s wedding and a pair of Converse high tops for everything else. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t April-appropriate. It snowed. And snowed. Something had to be done. There might have been snow outside, but inside the shoe shops of London it was already summer. Lots of sandals available, almost no boots. But what there was, in that Oxford Street shop, was a pair of black knee boots in my size (last pair in the shop) on sale for 60% off. Sorted.

I pretty much lived in those boots (well, when I was outside) for the next several winters. The heels have been redone a couple of times and the soles replaced. I thought they would last forever.

Alas, in early December, when the weather got cold enough to wear them, the zipper went in one of the boots. Obviously there is no place on the island where I could have the zippers replaced. Even if there was somewhere in town (no guarantee) that could do the job, (a) I hate getting the ferry into town and (b) the cost of replacing the zippers would probably be a lot more than the boots were worth.

Okay, I thought, given that knee boots are a necessity and given that Clarks are always a perfect fit, let’s see how much it would cost to buy new boots. I went on to the Clarks Canada website. There they were: pretty much exactly the same boots. And there were the words: “30% off everything. Today only.” I mean, what were the odds of me heading to that site on that day? Obviously it was meant to be. A new pair of knee boots would be my Christmas present to myself.

Pandemic postal service being what it is, the boots did not arrive in time for Christmas. They arrived this afternoon in a ridiculously large box.

Inside the ridiculously large box was another box.

Why they couldn’t just be shipped in the boot box is beyond me. Ordinarily I would consider this wasteful overpackaging. Under any circumstances it would be. But this is the winter and cardboard is good for starting fires in the woodstove. If I can ever get Stella out of the box, I’ll have enough cardboard to last a fortnight.

Oh, and the boots?

They fit, as I knew they would, perfectly.

All may not be right in the world (far from it), but this particular problem has been solved.

Happy Christmas to me.