I am not a Shoe Whore

I am not crazy about shopping. I am not mad for handbags. I wouldn’t recognise a pair of Jimmy Choos  if you took one off your dainty foot and clubbed me over the head with its spiky heel. I do not own enough pairs of shoes that I need a separate closet for them all. I do not own shoes in coordinating colours to my outfits. My house does not in any way resemble a shoe shop.  I’m clearly not a real woman. I can’t be if you believe the stereotype of “All women care about is shopping and shoes.” Therefore, by that definition, I must be a bloke.

My mum hails from the Imelda Marcos school of footwear. I take after my father. I own one pair of shoes for each season. I own a pair of wellies for rainy days. I have some sandals for hottest summer. I have a pair of black CROCS that can be worn with or without tights depending on the weather in spring. I have a pair of knee high faux fleece lined boots for coldest winter. And now I own a pair of ankle boots for autumn. It has been a bit cold and damp and my CROCS have not been warm enough, but it is too soon for the winter boots. So I reluctantly trudged over to our only shoe shop The Shoe Zone. Sure, clothing shops sell shoes, but they are more the fashionable but uncomfortable and not at all practical kind. So Shoe Zone it is.

There is also the issue with leather. I won’t wear it. I don’t want dead cow on my feet. The leather industry is a byproduct of the slaughterhouse industry and I don’t want to support them in any way. There are many vegan footwear shops online that sell non leather shoes, but they cost a packet. This is one thing that keeps the Amazing Spiderman from getting vegan shoes. It just hurts too much to by a pair of shoes for £75. But he does get vegan belts and wears them with a cool belt buckle shaped like a life size tarantula. Yes he does, but I digress. The Shoe Zone often has many “accidentally vegan” shoes for reasonable prices.

So I drag myself in and start to touch and smell the shoes. Not like sticking a shoe up my nose--I’m not a nutter--but as I lift it up to look for sizing I inhale slightly. Leather has that SMELL. It is a smell I used to find appealing, but now I do not. Then I find one that feels and smells right and I turn it over to read the sticker that shows the symbols and see if any bits are made from carcass. Sometimes they can trick you by hiding some leather trim on a wee bit of the shoe. Then comes the real trial. I have feet like an elf. I wear size 3  (size 5 in the US) but sometimes I can wear a 4. That’s when I feel like a giant. Most shoes seem to start in size 5. Once I actually find a pair in my elfin size then the last test begins--Is it comfortable? Will the shoe last? Is there a good sole? We are car free and I walk at least 2 miles every day--to work, to the shops and home again. Sometimes more. A shoe with a thin brittle sole will just crack or wear out and that means I’d have to go out and buy some more bloody shoes. 

Success! I find a pair of non leather ankle boots with a thick rubber sole in brown for £16.99. I would have preferred black, but hey ho. I got shoes. I like them so much after payday I will go buy a second pair to stash away for when these wear out in a couple of years. I’ve got an identical pair of winter boots lurking in my wardrobe for this exact purpose. This way I may not have to shop for shoes again for another 3 years or so. God, I really am a bloke.

Lick the Dish

We live in a market town and have a lovely market of fresh fruit and veg at rock bottom prices right on our doorstep every Tuesday and Saturday. We also have a deli that buys up over abundance of locally grown fruit and veg as well as a green grocer. It’s a vegan’s dream to be surrounded by healthy food, much of it locally grown. I love it here. You get everything loose (it’s BYOB--Bring Your-Own Bag) and no plastic. Good times.

Allow me to acquaint you with some of my favourite market buys.

Fennel. I love this stuff with its feathery green fronds and aniseed-y taste. But buying it at the supermarket can be mega expensive. I think it is £4.75 per pound or some other exorbitant figure that puts it out of my reach. Except at the market. There you can get big ole fennel 2 for £1.50. That’s 75p each. But you have to go early as they sell out quickly. And it’s not by size or weight--it’s per fennel. Did you notice that? So I can 2 good sized heavy ones for £1.50. Yes please.

Red peppers. I am pepper mad. I love the shiny red pepper and its crunchy sweet taste with all that vitamin C. More than an orange I think I read somewhere. But in the supermarket you get 3 in a plastic bag for £1.50 and one of them is green. I don’t like green. They have a funky bitter taste to me. Or you could go to the posh shop Marks and Spencer (M&S to those of us in the know) and get 3 for £1.60 but with no green. But it still comes in a plastic bag. What is the solution when you need peppers but don’t need plastic? Try the market first. Yesterday I got 6 fist sized glossy red peppers for £1. Yup, you heard me. One pound. And no plastic. One had a slightly wrinkled side so it was eaten up last night, but the rest will last the week. When the market has no peppers I will resort to the M&S bag to escape the dreaded green one. But most of the time I can snap some market ones up into my little cloth bag.

Friends have asked me “How can two people possibly eat 6 peppers in a week?” The answer is easy. Tonight we’re having a mixed bean and veg salad with roasted corn on the cob. One pepper goes in there. Tomorrow we’ll have Barley Risotto from the Vegan Yum Yum cookbook with roasted fennel, red onions and peppers. That’s 2 more peppers gone. See, we’re half way there already. Then I’ll roast (I see a theme here with all this roasting veg, don’t you?) sweet potatoes, tart bramley apples, carrots, 2 more peppers and red onions in the oven and then add stock and make a soup. I’ll puree it in my beloved Vita-Mix (I could write a whole post about this--and will wax lyrical about it at a future date) and have lovely sweet tangy soup. That just leaves one pepper to go which will probably be put in a salad somewhere along the line at lunch.

Now I’m very hungry so I’m off to make lunch. Probably involving a red pepper in some way. Yeah.

P.S.

Oh something I meant to add. You see how the thought of fresh food makes me go all gaga and forgetful? When I was coming home from the market yesterday in my dress apron and new mob cap (mob caps are cool) heavily laden with produce I was shouted at my several men who had clearly been imbibing alcohol. Now I have a slosh of brandy or frangelico in my chocolate oat milk from time to time, but I don’t sit around in front of a Medieval church drinking Triple XXX Lager at 10:30 in the morning. Ya dig? So one of them shouts, “Nice hat!” and I smile my friendliest smile and say, “Thanks,” and try to carry on but another ones gets up and stands in front of me. I stand up straighter giving my most confident and radiant smile and the man in my way shouted, “Piss off you lot.” Okay. So the other men amble away and the man starts to talk with me. Here is a replay of our conversation.

“What’s that all about then? Them clothes?” He gestures spilling a slosh of lager on the pavement.

“I’m a Quaker. It’s the church I go to. Most Quakers don’t dress like this but I do.”

“Oh Quakers. Yeah, they’ve got some Quaker stuff on the outside of the library.”

“Oh yeah, that's right. There is that mural on the library that shows Quakers in Hitchin.”

“Why do you wear them clothes if no one else is?”

“Well I don’t want to buy clothes that are made in sweatshops by poor children.”

“Aw yeah. I saw a show about that on telly. Them little foreign kids working 18 hours a day for pennies. That’s a real shame. So where do you get your clothes then?”

“I sew them myself.”

His eyes start to shine and he becomes really animated.

“Aw my sister she has a sewing machine and she makes all her clothes and her kids clothes, too. She has this old machine with a treadle where you have to pump it with both feet to make it sew.” He demonstrates sewing technique and spills a bit more lager.

“I’ve always wanted one of those old fashioned ones. I just have an electric sewing machine.”

“That is cool. Yeah, really cool. Good talking to you. Nice to see someone keeping the faith.” And he waved and toddled off.

So yeah. Being plain can have its advantages. I have spoken to a man and shown him kindness. He may (or may not depending on the amount of lager he drinks) remember it. But I will.

Do you like my hat?

What about hats, I hear you ask. Do I cover my head? Well after reading the weighty tome that was My Plain Dress Conviction you might want to take a break and visit the loo. Or have a snack. Or dance around like John Travolta to your favourite disco songs. Or whatever you like to do to chill out because this might take a while. Take your time. I’ll wait.


Ready? Then let’s begin.

My Head Covering Conviction

Yes, it was all very well to decide to wear a dress and an apron, but after I felt called to simplify my dress I thought “I will never cover my head. That would be too extreme, even for me.” Well, never say never. In the spring of my first plain year I was looking at modest clothing websites for a sunbonnet as I am fair and prone to burning and don’t like to put sun cream on my face. Plus, if I’m being honest, I had a crush on Holly Hobbie as a kid. I came across http://www.plainlydressed.com/  and while looking for a sunbonnet stumbled upon a picture of a plain soft muslin cap and my heart did a summersault. All of a sudden I felt flooded by the most peaceful feeling and the thought that I really wanted to wear that prayer cap. My hair had become a real struggle for me since I went plain. As some of you know I cut my own hair. Daily. Obsessively. And I have a real problem with checking my hair out to see if it is still sticking up in a punky way in every mirror, window and reflective surface. And all the dampness of England meant my hair wouldn’t stay punk and I was constantly fiddling with it. I think the lowest moment was when the Amazing Spiderman caught me checking myself out in the back of a spoon. Oh the shame of it. It had become a real burden for me and I saw that cap as a way to lay that burden aside. So I ordered two (one to wash and one to wear) and began wearing them on a daily basis. I wore them faithfully for many years.

This summer I noticed they were looking a bit tatty so I needed to decide what to do. First I had to decide if I still needed to wear one. So I asked myself these questions:

1. Was I still obsessed with looking at my hair? Not so much. The head covering really helped me to not think of my hair as an accessory, but as the stuff that grows out of the top of my head. When I wore it I looked neat and tidy without having to fix my hair constantly.

2. Was I still having hair cutting obsessions? You bet your sweet bippy. Perhaps even more so. The cap was meant to be worn with long hair pulled up in a bun. My hair is short and thin and didn’t really fill out the back part. Any bit of hair sticking out, particularly at the fitted neckline, really bothered me because it looked scraggly and I cut. So much cutting. Lots and lots of cutting. It probably is a fair guess to say that I may have cut a bald spot from time to time, but the Amazing Spiderman refuses to comment. So one improvement, one backslide.

3. Did I want to continue with the same style? Tricky, that one. I had lots of good outreach with the Muslim students I teach. They saw me as someone like them: someone who loved their God enough to wear something out of the ordinary and not be ashamed. One student in particular who just started wearing a hijab last year at the age of 10 said with wide eyes when she first saw me wear it, “Oh, we look like twins!” and was forever talking to me about the practicality of head covering and how we looked alike. But I wasn’t as keen on the style. The fitted back and my lack of long hair was an issue as well as the ties. I really hated them tied under my chin but letting ’em hang loose meant always getting tangled with my backpack straps.

4. What effect did a covering have on me? I really liked the feel of a hat on my head. The feeling of weight. Like a gentle reminder to think before I spoke or acted. To keep my head about me when all others are losing theirs. To be a symbol of my faith in God. To set me apart as a believer and empower my Muslim children to be strong in their faith which in turn strengthens my faith. So yeah. I needed a new hat.

So, I did some research (thank you Google) and again the perfect example appeared before me. A mob cap. Worn in the 18th century by respectable married women, but by the 19th century worn mostly by the servant class. But a mob cap! Betsy Ross wore a mob cap. Mob caps are cool. So I dug around in my handy-dandy box of scraps and found enough fabric to make two. Traditionally they were white, but I cannot for the life in me keep anything white clean so mine are black.

So that’s the story of my clothes and my hair and how I (mostly) beat my obsessions and how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb. Or something like that.