Re: The epic shoe thread

[cosmictanya]

Yes indeed, too executive and legislative and the other thing.

On shoes, trainers specifically, Dior have collaborated with Air Jordan - something I discovered in the last hour when a girl turned up with a boxed pair for my son. Complete with a rather sweetly handmade birthday card...

It's not his birthday, and he's not in the country anyway, so I just said thanks and wished her a pleasant school holiday. How nice of him to confirm his shoe size before leaving - actually the next size up so he can grow into them, what forward planning.

These things cost an obscene amount - even I nearly passed out when I looked online.

I might go out. I think I will. There's no point in my ringing him in the opening salvo of an extended punishment because he's with my mother, so she'll simply defend him and turn it all back on me for trying to ruin their fun.

[Nightjar]

Suggest an album for us to do a live review of.

You don't have to participate, but you need to suggest an album you genuinely like.

This is not a request - IT IS AN ORDER!!

[Fangirl Three]

Does one give orders to CT?

[cosmictanya]

Fine. Cher - Heart of Stone.

[Nightjar]

Does one give orders to CT?

Yes, me.

Cher - Heart of Stone it is.

[cosmictanya]

Yes indeed, too executive and legislative and the other thing.

On shoes, trainers specifically, Dior have collaborated with Air Jordan - something I discovered in the last hour when a girl turned up with a boxed pair for my son. Complete with a rather sweetly handmade birthday card...

It's not his birthday, and he's not in the country anyway, so I just said thanks and wished her a pleasant school holiday. How nice of him to confirm his shoe size before leaving - actually the next size up so he can grow into them, what forward planning.

These things cost an obscene amount - even I nearly passed out when I looked online.

I might go out. I think I will. There's no point in my ringing him in the opening salvo of an extended punishment because he's with my mother, so she'll simply defend him and turn it all back on me for trying to ruin their fun.

He's back, he's back! So exciting to see him. We went to McDonalds where I surprised him by wandering off upstairs and leaving him to pay for my fries and strawberry milkshake.

I said there's something at home, it's by your bed and I'm not all that pleased that you spun this girl a line to get something and then just waltzed off, so I hope you understand how hurtful that could be.

Now he's off doing some window shopping, and this afternoon is meeting a friend at the V&A to show off his tan expand their cultural capital, while I work. I have quite a dull afternoon ahead.

[cosmictanya]

[cosmictanya]

I'm not sure how you'd walk in them, but I'd wear them to a party. Perhaps for Halloween this year I'll go as Madonna, as above, with the addition of those shoes.

I found them through my reading about a shoe museum in a small town in Belgium which sounds fabulous. The SONS Museum...

A unique ethnographic collection of more than 2700 pairs of shoes from more than 155 countries and regions. Amongst them are some very rare pieces of North American Indians, Eskimo's, African tribes, Berbers, Bedoeins, Mongols, the Ottoman and pre-Inca empire. The museum is also famous for housing every shoe gnawed on by the dog simply known as Duke, who gnawed on and destroyed over 500 pairs, mostly Nike's. On 19 September 2006, The Guinness Book Of World Records confirmed that William "Boy" Habraken collected the largest collection of tribal and ethnographical shoes in the world. The museum houses this collection and a design collection of known shoe designers such as André Perugia, Salvatore Ferragamo, Christian Louboutin and Manolo Blahnik. There's also a selection of cartoons, mainly made by Belgium and Dutch comic artists such as Jean-Marc van Tol, Jean-Claude Servais, Kim Duchateau, Lamelos, Bill Griffith, and others. And a collection of short stories by writers such as Geert van Istendael, Kees van Kooten, Adriaan van Dis, Midas Dekkers, Renate Dorrestein, Cees Noteboom, and others.

That sounds really fun.

[cosmictanya]

As I've said before, we are seriously missing these kinds of gems scattered across the country in every direction you care to look. The United States and the rest of Europe is light years ahead. As I believe I've said before, the Nahmad family offered their entire collection of art, fine art, and antiquities (one of the largest in the world) as a gift to the UK. They suggested the site of the old Middlesex Hospital in Fitzrovia as an appropriate location.

Our government refused this offer of the century, because Westminster City Council had plans to use the site for luxury housing with no social provision. That alone should have seen that entire body closed down on the grounds of being incapable of running a bath. Any other country would've fought for the right to be in the running, let alone the first choice. Embarrassing. It's only our own mean tightness of not helping Egypt with an engineering project that means we are without the wonderful gift of a complete ancient temple, saved, shipped here, and reconstructed on a site of our choice. The USA, Spain, and The Netherlands all provided expertise and money, and all three benefited by being gifted such a generous prize. When General Franco achieves a flagship cultural prize from taking a more philanthropic stance than anyone the 'great' British public have elected, we should be deeply examining the state we are in.

You couldn't turn up to a small town in Britain and find a lovingly curated collection of thousands of shoes from all cultures and periods and fashions. You'd be lucky to be charged less than a tenner to be shown a collection of old chamber pots and a selection of black and white photographs blutacked to a wall. It's shameful. Absolutely shameful.

[cosmictanya]

I understand Wetherspoons have plans for a museum of some sort in Wolverhampton. I'm sure that will be exciting. A collection of branded (John Player, etc), vintage, plastic pub ashtrays perhaps. A yard of ale feature as an interactive exhibit.

I only know this because they delivered their in house magazine to this address last year. We had to collectively write to the management company to say that unsolicited commercial/political publications of that sort wouldn't be welcome in future.

[The Call of the Wendigo]

You couldn't turn up to a small town in Britain and find a lovingly curated collection of thousands of shoes from all cultures and periods and fashions.

In fairness, there is a pencil museum in Keswick.

[The Call of the Wendigo]

[cosmictanya]

I can see that might work. Lovely ones, historic ones, famous peoples ones, sketches and drawings, diagrams and world changing equations and sheets of music composed by notables with their pencils. A tactile memory station with those green ones we must all remember from school, queueing up at the massive sharpener on the edge of the teachers table to insert the pencil and turn the lever in circles.

Is it any good?

[cosmictanya]

My enjoyment of pencils is a relatively new development. As a child I resented having to use one.

When I was about 8 I took a blue biro to school and refused point blank to use anything else. I was forced to lift up my desk and 'take yourself and your things over to the corner to face the wall'. I sat there alone until the end of the year.

I still remember she wrote on my report card that I never listened. No mention of the fact that from my place in isolated exile, I couldn't hear her properly or even see when she was getting up to talk or give instruction.

[The Call of the Wendigo]

Is it any good?

I don't know.

[The Call of the Wendigo]

Here's a picture of it.


The newlook Pencil Museum in Keswick
Stinglehammer / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)

[cosmictanya]

Well, it doesn't look all that enticing, I don't think I'll go. All those printed information boards, presumably about pencils, seem like a terrible and unforgivable oversight. You'd hope they'd have used their own medium to best/any effect.

I suggest they go back to basics. Include the things I mentioned in my question and add some real pathos with love letters, suicide notes, war correspondences from teens in trenches, cheeky notes confiscated by teachers. That kind of thing.

[Guest]

There's a Shoe Museum in Street,

https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g780820-d2663417-Reviews-The_Shoe_Museum-Street_Somerset_England.html



And Northampton,


no it's true.


https://www.northamptonshirebootandshoe.org.uk/content/northampton/northampton-articles/the-world-famous-shoe-collection-northampton-museum-art-gallery

[Guest]

[cosmictanya]

I did actually know about the shoe heritage of Northampton. That's exactly the kind of thing they could be promoting to add a touch of glamour to their town. As it is, I've never been and I don't know anyone who has, although I have a male escort friend who used to/might still have a regular (and outrageously demanding) client in Kettering.

We used to drink together at The Enterprise in Walton Street. I must get in touch to see what he's up to.

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