These Boots Were Made for Walking
March 2011
In a part of the corridor, just by the stairs by the front door, lies a pair of Old Black Boots. It’s been quite a while since they have been walking. And if their owner were truthful – they could do with a bit of a clean. The hooks holding the laces crusted with dirt, their leather is worn from the passing of time having seen many a moorland excursion. Lakeland water now pools at the toes.
But they still feel right. As if once put on, they could take their owner from their Salford home out to the hills of Perpignan and back again, covering miles along the way and without a mutter or moan.
Rugby Boots and Training shoes might be fine for a sportsman at Old Trafford but they don’t cut it on the fields of the West Yorkshire Moors. If these boots could talk, the tales they would tell – of covering rocky paths once stepped by Roman Legionaries, of campfire ditties sung round old ancient stones, and of moonlight illuminating mugs of steaming hot Beef Tea.
They’d sit outside tents so the groundsheet stayed clean, and leave their owner a morning surprise if they hadn’t been left under the flysheet. They would walk for miles as their owner crossed field and moor, praying that they would avoid the hidden cowpats. Of course they’d get cleaned on one day, just before parade, as the group amassed around a solitary flagpole.
Where they’ll go next, is anyone’s guess. But for now they just sit on the varnished wooden shelf, looking quite a sight with dark brown Yorkshire mud entrapped in the soles. They look at themselves in the tall hallway mirror and think of the streams they’ve crossed and the moors they’ve run, the bracken broken for kindling and stiles climbed in fun.
