A letter from a reader

At 63, my sister asked why I stop coming on the morning walk every May. I told her it was the dark. It was not the dark.

You should picture me writing this at the kitchen table with a cup of tea going cold beside me, because that is exactly how slowly it has come. I am not a writer, and what another woman puts on her feet in winter has never been any of my business.

But four women have asked me about these in the last fortnight, two of them at the same table at book club, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it all down properly.

It started with Carol, my sister, who walks with me most mornings from about September through to April and then does not see me for five months. She has never made anything of it. This year she rang in the first week of May, asked if I was coming, and when I gave her the usual answer about the dark mornings she went quiet for a second and then she said it.

It is not the dark, Maggie. You have one comfortable pair of shoes and they are sandals.

I laughed, and then I went and looked in the bottom of the wardrobe, and she was right. One pair I can walk any distance in. Open, flat, soft, bought three summers ago and worn almost every day from October onwards. And then a row of boots and winter shoes behind them that I own because you cannot wear sandals in June, not one of which I would choose to walk four kilometres in.

I did not decide to take five months off every year. That is the part I want to be clear about. Nobody decides that. It happens quietly, one winter at a time, until your sister works out that your excuse has a season to it.

How it happens

When I actually thought about why the winter shoes were all like that, I understood how the shops are arranged.

Comfort is a summer department. That is the honest truth of it. Open sandals, soft uppers, a bit of give, nothing pressing anywhere. And then the weather turns and you walk into the same shop and the whole back wall is boots, and a boot is a structure. It has to hold a shape, it has to close around your ankle, and whatever softness was available in January is simply not on offer in June.

Comfortable for half the year, or covered. That was the whole shoe shop. Nobody seemed to think a woman might want the same amount of give in a boot that she gets in a sandal.

And once that is all there is, you stop expecting anything else. You buy the winter boots because you need winter boots. You wear them for the short trips and you stop doing the long ones. And you tell your sister it is the dark.

What I had wrong

Here is the bit I got most wrong, and I suspect I am not alone.

I thought my problem was winter. I have said it for years. I am not a winter person, I go a bit quiet in the cold, I will see you in September.

It turns out it was never about winter.

It is about whether comfortable shoes exist in the shape you need for the month you are in. The thing I liked about the sandals was never that they were sandals. It was that they were soft, that they gave where my foot is widest, that the sole was cushioned the whole way along. There is no reason on earth a boot or a loafer or a pair of trainers cannot be all three of those things. They simply usually are not, and I had taken that as a fact about the year rather than a fact about shops.

It took me until 63, and a phone call in the first week of May, to work that out.

What I actually found

They are from Perth Boutique, a small Australian boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. Carol found them, which after the business with the morning walk she is entitled to mention as often as she likes.

It is not a rack of sandals, which is what I had expected and is the reason I am writing this down. It runs to four pages, and it has boots and ankle boots, loafers and slip-ons, trainers, flat shoes, and a great many sandals at the far end of it. The same sort of thing in every shape the year needs. I took a pair of ankle boots and a pair of loafers, and I will come back to what happened.

The give is the part that matters. The boots I took have a soft upper rather than a rigid one, so there is nothing holding my foot in a shape it has not agreed to, and the sole is cushioned from the heel right through to the toe rather than only under the heel. The loafers are the same idea in a shoe you can wear to lunch. That is all I was ever asking for. It was available in a sandal in January and I had assumed it stopped being available in May.

That is really all there is to it. It is not complicated. It is the same softness, in a shape that covers your foot.

What happened in June

The first proper outing was the morning walk, in the first week of June, which I have not done since about 2019.

Three women asked me about the boots before the month was out. One of the other walkers started it, because she asked at the car park where I had been for four years and then asked about the boots in the same breath.

The third was Lorraine, who I have known for twenty years and who has never once commented on anything I wear. She looked down and asked whether they were walking boots. They are not walking boots. I have decided to take that as a compliment.

What I noticed more than the questions, though, was August. I was still going. I had got all the way through the middle of winter without the thing where you stop, and then feel bad about having stopped, and then stop a bit more, which I had not realised had been the shape of every year since about 2019 until it was not.

And when the sandals came back out in October it was not a rescue. It was just a change of shoes. Completely myself.

Three things I have learned since

One. I am a winter person. I was a footwear problem. Four years of a personality trait that turned out to be the contents of the bottom of my wardrobe. I would like those four winters back.

Two. It was never about sandals. It was soft where my foot is widest and cushioned the whole length of the sole. Those two things have nothing to do with the season, and I had quietly filed them under summer.

Three. Buy the winter ones in summer. I bought boots in October, which felt ridiculous, and it is the only reason I was ready in May. Nobody shops for winter shoes while they are happy with their feet, and that is exactly when you should.

About the price

I want to be straightforward about this, because it was the thing that made me suspicious.

The pair I bought was $64.95, down from $129.00. Across the whole collection it runs from about that up to around a hundred and twenty for the heavier boots.

My first thought, honestly, was that there had to be a catch, because the winter boots I had been not-walking in cost me more than double that.

There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is no middleman taking a cut, and they have their spring and anniversary sale on at the moment, with free shipping Australia wide, and a little more off again if you take two or more — which, if you are buying for two seasons at once, is worth knowing.

I did what I imagine you are doing now and had a proper look before I ordered. Four pages of it, which took me a while, and I would say go past the first page before you decide anything, because the shapes change a great deal as you go.

Then I went back and got the loafers, which Carol had predicted out loud in front of witnesses.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sat in the kitchen with the teapot between us and you asked me, this is what I would say.

If there is something you do in summer and quietly stop doing in winter, and you have a reason for it that you have never really examined, then have a look at what is on your feet for those five months. It may be nothing to do with the weather at all.

Not because a pair of boots will change your life. They will not. But there is something in getting through a whole year without a season off that I had quietly given up on, and I would rather you did not give up on it too.

Two practical things. The sale is on at the moment, and the free shipping goes with it. And buy the winter ones now, while it is warm and you are not desperate, because that is the only time anybody ever chooses well.

I did not miss a single morning walk last winter.

Maggie