I bit the bullet a few days ago and shelled out herds of cash for a new pair of boots. I was going to get wellies, but was seduced at the last minute by an offering from my old friend Dr Marten. A nice pair of calf-length black leather boots to keep the wind and water out while riding the Beau Jolly.
The next morning it started to rain, and I was feeling a bit less upset about the hole in my wallet as I headed north on the Hollywood Freeway, aka Roosevelt Rd. Suddenly, my reverie was disturbed by the slap of flat feet through the puddles as I waited at the lights. I looked around to see this wild-eyed panting maniac yelling “see you, Jimmy” and glaring at me through his tartan helmet.
It’s not allowed to ‘out’ people on Forumosa, so I can’t say who it was, but the Hibernian pillock was pushing a motorbike that is the same as mine in most respects - except that this one a) is plastered with Hello Kitty stickers, and b) has run out of petrol and the nut behind the handlebars is too stubborn to take advice from people about how to fix it. So there he was, running down the street, skirts flapping, pushing his bike, shouting “vroom vroom, freedom” like some modern-day Braveheart wannabe who’s late for the battle, and looking for someone to pick a fight with.
“See you,” he cried. “I saw that jacket and wondered who it was, but it could only be you. Och.”
Obviously he was referring to the fact that I choose to be visible to other drivers, rather than take refuge in a tartan composed entirely of greys and muddy browns, but who am I to be worried by his highland envy? I just smiled serenely and glanced at his wet feet, which were encased in a pair of puffy trainers. Then I casually held out the glistening leather to be admired, turning it from side to side before his wide eyes and intoned gently “Read 'em and weep, MacGuffin!”
The poor deluded haggis-eater didn’t get the point though. He just said “how much?” and so, for him, here’s a quote from Terry Pratchett:
[quote]The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socio-economic unfairness.[/quote]
I love putting rebellious Scots in their place. Kiss the boots, you Grampian Git.