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Clarks Sandals

By

Vivien Jones

It was just the week before we went back to school. Doreen had collected her ‘Dandy’ from the corner shop and wasn’t saying anything. She’s short sighted so she was holding it up her face and peering at it like an old lady. I wasn’t letting on that I wanted to see what Desperate Dan was up to so I started to nibble my apple while I sneaked looks over her arm. She knew it too, kept raising her arm so I couldn’t see the end of the story. Cousins can be hellish cruel. Jimmy was saying nothing. His mum had taken him to the shoe shop and, horrors, bought him a pair of sandals for the summer term instead of the boots (like mine ) he wanted. She told him they were real Clark’s sandals which they were, but they had a T strap and they were blue. Doreen’s shoes were more lad-like than Jimmy’s sandals, she had taken the trouble to point out. His mother had said he should break them in before wearing them to school. He sat behind me on the pavement keeping his feet out of sight.

Doreen got to the ending of her reading, or teasing, whichever ran out of fun first and asked us if we fancied a game of footie on the waste-ground.

‘You could get some mud on those sandals, Jimmy.’ She said.

There was a ball in the close, wedged behind the plumbing in the cludgie. She exchanged her comic for the ball and came running back towards us dribbling it over the stones, not bad for a girl.

Doreen was right about the mud. The waste ground had been bombed-out houses for a couple of years after the war, then they were pulled down with the idea of building new ones but that hadn’t happened yet. So it was a guddle of plaster and bricks that got scribbled over with fireweed and brambles every summer. Day long games of football kept the centre area free of vegetation and years of tossing the larger bits of brick and building to one side had a produced a dimpled surface. When it rained the ground produced a mud composed of plaster, brick dust, soot and fire scrapings dumped from houses, a sticky grey stuff that wouldn’t wash out of clothes. I was under constant threat of a thick ear if I got it on my school clothes.

Jimmy cheered up a bit when he saw the puddles. He went and stood up to the buckles in one, swooshing his feet back and forward. When he lifted one out it dripped grey liquid like a waterfall but his sandals were no longer blue except on the straps. Jimmy hollered. I’m Rangers!’ and tore off with the ball. ‘I’m Hearts then.’

Doreen was close behind him. ‘Motherwell !‘. I always got landed with Motherwell because I was too slow to bags one of the other teams and my granddad came from there. I didn’t care. Our three team kick-about soon attracted whatever other kids were around and in no time, we had two teams of nine and thirteen players balanced out by size — the MacDonald twins counted for one player because they were miniscule and did everything together and Robert Duff was too fat to be anything but a wall of a goalie.

Jimmy played like a maniac, tearing through puddles and into tackles where he tangled his feet with his opponents’ but he never cried foul once. Soon his legs were grey up to the knees, his shorts and jersey were splattered and he was grinning like a banshee. I thought to myself. It’s all very well just now but what when he goes home? Jimmy’s mother was known for her temper. When folk started leaving the game for their tea and Doreen came up to me.

‘Should we try and clean him up a bit?’ she asked. ‘There’s a hose in my back close.’

Jimmy wasn’t keen but we insisted, thinking the row might extend to us being his closest pals. Doreen placed him against the wall and told him to turn slowly whilst she played a sad stream of cold water over his feet.

‘This is pathetic.’ She said and jammed her thumb into the stream sending a rainbow spray all over him. Jimmy squealed and we laughed. The grey quickly came off his skin and his clothes were soon dark with the running water but the sandals the sandals began to shed mud and almost glowed with a bright blue shine.

‘Aw no !‘ Jimmy was appalled. He was standing in a grey puddle, shivering and staring at his feet in horror. He looked as if he was going to cry. We couldn’t have that.

‘Jimmy, Jimmy, what would Beryl the Peril do?’ Doreen urged him. Jimmy snuffled and thought for a bit.

‘Throw them into a pond. Put them in Desperate Dan’s pie.’

He didn’t look as if he thought either of these solutions might work. A light bulb went off in my head.

‘Is today not bin day?’ I asked.

We sat on the pavement and got our story straight. We wanted a game of footie but Jimmy didn’t want to spoil his nice new sandals. I offered to lend him my second best boots so he took the sandals off and wrapped them in a newspaper. Newspaper? Yea, we found one in a bin because we thought no-one would nick them if they just looked like rubbish beside the rubbish bin. But we didn’t know it was bin day! Imagine our horror when we saw the lorry and heard the churning of its innards and saw the trail of empty bins in its wake. We had chased after it but it had finished its run and sped off spewing diesel fumes in our faces.

Jimmy wrung his hands like an orphan in the telling and Doreen managed a tear or two. I made do with a frown. Jimmy’s mum smacked her forehead with her palm and said wait until I see those bloody bin men. We had never heard one of our parents swear before so that was special. Even more special the next week was overhearing her bellowing at a very large confused bin man whilst we three, Jimmy in his last year’s boots, sat on the pavement smiling.