OH I WISH I’D LOOKED AFTER ME FEET

Oh, I wish I’d looked after me feet and listened when Bruce gave me grief.
 All the high heels I wore, 
which made me arches so sore.
 Oh, I wish I’d looked after me feet!

I wish I’d been that much less vain, when I could walk so far without pain. 
To not cramp my toes or be taken by show,
 and to buy something comfy and plain.

When I think of the money I spent, on footwear designed to impress, I regret it now ,
as me feet look so foul, all crushed and crooked and bent.

With apologies to Pam Ayres – an adaptation of her poem “Oh I Wish I’d Looked After Me Teeth” – by Anne

My husband and I went on the most amazing ‘Around the World” holiday this year. We walked for miles in cities, across the countryside, through dells and over fells. Before we left, Mr Sensible bought a pair of waterproof hiking boots and spent weeks ‘wearing them in’ so that they would not cause his feet any problems. This was especially important for our three-day walk around Windermere in the Lakes District in Northern England.

Mrs “I’ll Be Fine” took one look at the size of ‘said’ boots and felt their weight. I decided to ‘make do’ with joggers and lace-up Roc school boots for the trip. They looked so much funkier and took up less room in the luggage.

All was going well, as long as I alternated between boots and joggers each day, until we took the serious 20 km per day walks up and down the beautiful hills of northern England. On day two it rained for the entire day. It wasn’t gentle misty rain. It was constant, cold needles in your face, brisk type of rain that turned our paths into rocky waterfalls and the adjoining greenery into muddy slush. Within an hour my feet were sopping wet and I squelched my way trudgingly along for the next six hours.

When I peeled all my outer layers and socks off in the entrance of our lovely B and B, our host took one look at my ‘clobber’ and my feet and just shook his head.

We walked again the next day and the next and the next for the following two weeks. Nothing was going to stop me from seeing the world, not even my feet!

Back home … I put on a pair of court shoes to attend a birthday party. Oh the agony! I sat down for most of the night with my feet under a table and my shoes off. No dancing for me!

The joggers and Rocs have been the only shoes that I have been able to bear on my feet since, and then, only for a limited time. What a relief it is to take them off at night!

Yesterday I finally made a visit to the podiatrist. He told me that I had probably damaged the ligaments and that I had tendonitis in my foot. He firmly told me to go and buy a pair of men’s joggers, that afternoon, when my feet would be at their most swollen. The other instruction was to rest my feet for six weeks.

Rest my feet?! Not possible! ‘Well’, he compromised. ‘no going for long walks or runs’ …

So here I sit in my big man shoes, resting … ‘Oh I wish I’d looked after me feet!’