Old ambitions...

Many years ago (so long ago that it seems like one of those nostalgic film documentaries that are sometimes shown on BBC2 on a Wednesday evening) I was a teenager. Thirteen, fourteen at the oldest; I experimented with cider, youth club discos, girls, and of course a look. I went from boy, to Cromby, to loons, to baggy Oxfords, it seemed as if in an instant.

Back then, if you knew the right pub to swagger into, you’d get served. Back then, if you looked at someone just the wrong way you’d get beaten to a pulp, chased at the very least. Back then, although I thought about asking girls to dance, I rarely did. Back then, I wanted a pair of oxblood Docs and I’ve been wanting them ever since.

Now drinking, fighting, and girling have pretty much lost there attraction over the years, and I recently began to wonder just what was left. Then it struck me - those oxblood Docs that I’d allowed to elude me.

Just why I never got around to buying a pair or two escapes me now. It wasn’t the cost, although they don’t come cheap; maybe it was because I wanted my Docs to remain a dream.

Well, more than forty years on the dream has now been realised. I have my Docs but find that I have to persuade myself to wear them. Mad I know - but you see, although I’ve worn them out for an hour or two, I hold them in such awe that I’m scared of scuffing them.

I’m sure I’ll get over it. But for now they are for ‘best’.

‘For best’, what a quaint idea. Perhaps I really am living in a nostalgic film documentary on BBC2.