My wife has delicate feet. But, like really delicate. So she has ‘specialised shoes’. Shoes for every and any possible occurrence. Shoes for work, shoes for play, shoes for formal, informal, dress wear, shoes for walking (long distance), shoes for walking (muddy places), shoes for walking (places that aren’t long or muddy), and so it goes on, then we get to the ‘spares’. The reserves. Just in case shoes. For slightly wet tuesdays when working part of the day and walking medium to short distances on fairly dry ground whilst wearing green. Otherwise WHAT SHOES WOULD SHE WEAR????? Would be a disaster.

I’m not normally privvy to shoe-buying of my women. I’m deemed unworthy. Possessing a total of 3 pairs of shoes. Work. Jeans. Tennis. What else do I need? But yesterday, bank holiday, Mel and I decided to ‘pop’ into Sports Direct on the way to food shopping (I LOVVVE food shopping, almost as much as I hate shoe shopping, but we’ll get to that) to pick up ‘just a spare pair of shoes’. Sounded like a plan. Until we arrived.

Sports Direct is the brain-child of Mike Ashley and it has made him rich. Rich enough to buy Newcastle United football club where his is universally hated for being too rich, too fat, too southern and too Mike Ashley for their gentle, Geordieness. When he renamed the hundred year old stadium, St James’s Park, as: sports direct@St James’s, there were riots.

But his business, built on the old ethos of ‘pile ’em high; sell ’em cheap’ is a fantastic success. Its a modern type ‘store’ in which there are loads of uneducated sub-normal kids, taken straight from the special needs classes at all the schools where they have metal detectors at the gates, and all the parents vote UKIP, and they’re dressed in red, so can be easily identified. Also because they are generally dangerous. And they have walkie-talkies so they can… er… walk and talk. They don’t do advice, they don’t ‘help’ in any conventional shoppy way, they just get things that you need by screeching into their walkie-talkies to the mother-ship, where all the other shoe sizes are kept, either on Venus, or a satellite orbiting the moon.

And why I am considered a fairly bad shopper, whilst my wife is the Nigel Farage, the Real Madrid, the Jennifer Lawrence of the shopping basket, is because of our slightly different styles of shopping, to our individual approaches to purchasing.

I look, I find, (within my 30-second limit) I buy. If I don’t find, I leave. GAME OVER.

Mel examines every item on sale. Every single one. She is systematic, thorough, ruthless and microscopically efficient. Rack after rack of clothes, she doesn’t tire, nor get bored, nor lose focus; its commendable. And the reason we can not, should not, must never ever even if hell has indeed frozen over and I don’t have a coat, NEVER shop together.

So yesterday as we walked into (HELL!!!) the store, the size of an aircraft hangar, one wall of which is just sports shoes. Millions of them. Trillions. More shoes than there are grains of sand on a beach. More shoes than there are atoms in the universe. Every size, colour, style, design, every combination of those, every variation conceivable and inconceivable, they have them.

I recognised the look on Mel’s face as we entered. It said: there is THE perfect pair of shoes in here; for tuesdays, green/grey, medium walking, short-driving, orthotic-friendly, elevated heel, well padded… I just have to find them.

And in the mirror on the right I recognised the look on my face. Sheer fucking terror! Panic-rising! Pale, sweaty, nauseous-looking, manic-eyes darting round looking for escape (or death; either way),

I tried to be good. I tried to be supportive, but she knew the look on my face (terror), she could tell by my body language (retching), that the trip was doomed. Would need to be suspended until she could come alone. I felt bad, a bit guilty, but the relief as we left Sports Direct to the other 3,000 punters; that odd combination of Rumanians, Bulgarians and UKIP supporters who are their demographic.

Happy, relieved-to-be-back-at-work Tuesday,

A xxxx