Yesterday I lamented the fact that deck shoes might be fine on decks and docks but they’re useless on a tidal slipway. Today I proved it. The Lizards arrived, fresh from Ebay.
So say goodbye, it’s Independence Day.
There are about seven million things wrong with the way they look. They look like….. they look like…… I can hardly bear to say it. They. Look. Like. Trainers.
There. It’s out. I don’t care whether they’re made of Happy Cow our not. It means the leather isn’t leather, but given the cow definitely doesn’t need its skin any more I have to say that doesn’t particularly concern me. They were a bit warm on the water today, but when I set off at 14:30 the car thermometer said 30 Centigrade, so they probably ought to have done.
They’ve got white laces. Not leather. Not even Happy Cow lookee-likee leather. I thought it was shock cord, but no, they’re actual laces. White ones.
But, and it is a huge but, BUT…. just look at that sole. It’s not just Vibram rubber, although Vibram is wonderful stuff, invented by an Italian mountain climber who was like me, even if only in that he was fed up of slipping, especially given that could have got him killed.
Slip Sliding Away
It’s a Vibram rubber sole with MAHOOOOOSIVE cleats which even more miraculously, doesn’t mark, doesn’t weigh as much as a handkerchief and absolutely definitely tested-it-myself-on-a-wet-muddy-slipway-today does not slip. Oh, and they actually support your foot too. You could go for a decent walk in these if you felt like it, which is something true deck-shoes aren’t really built for. Quite how the Last of the Mohicans managed in moccasins remains a mystery, but maybe being able to walk further and faster might have meant not going extinct. That and no fire-water, land-grabs and thunder-sticks arriving, anyway.
So I have to say it. Don Johnson wouldn’t have liked it. I don’t. But it’s true. This fake leather looks-like-a-trainer deck shoe does everything Sebagos or Sperrys do. Just about twenty times better. Ok, they’re even more expensive than either of those brands although thanks to some judicious shopping and a special offer from the seller mine were sniggeringly cheap. They’re made in Italy, not China, so whatever else you can say about them you know they haven’t been individually washed in children’s tears. They’re utterly brilliant.
Except they don’t look like 1980s deck shoes….
