Sunday, September 17, 2006

Saving your sole

Without a doubt the most difficult thing to do is buy shoes. I have tried it and have been thrown out of quite a few shoe shops. The dialogue usually follows as:

Shoer: Hello Madam can I help you.
Me: Yes. I'd like a pair of shoes.
Shoer: Any particular type.
Me: Well a pair of clowns shoes would be good.
Shoer: I'm sorry, but we don't sell clowns shoes.
Me (looking around): But, I see some shoes here that look like clowns shoes.
Shoer: No I'm sorry they're designer shoes and are quite expensive.
Me: Well how about all these people they're dressed like clowns surely they're here to buy some clown shoes too?
Shoer: I'm sorry, but we do not sell clown shoes and I will have to ask you to leave.

At this point I'm usually asked to leave the store.
Clown shoes are indeed difficult to buy.

I have also had no luck when buying train passenger shoes (technically known as trainers). I usually use the following technique:

Me: I'd like a pair of trainers please.
Shoer: Yes madam we have a fine selection of trainers any particular make?
Me: Yes, I'd like British Rail trainers please.
Shoer: Ok, well most people tend to wear these green ones. Perhaps you'd like to try a pair of those?
Me: Yes indeed do you have them in my size?
Shoer: What size is that?
Me: I'm not sure.
Shoer: What size shoes are you wearing?
Me: I'm afraid I don't know. They're not my shoes they belong to a friend.
Shoer: Well do you know the size shoe your friend wears?
Me: Certainly not! I don't ask personal questions like that.
Shoer: Perhaps we can measure your feet then.
Me: I'm afraid that's difficult to do as I'm not allowed to take my shoes off in public.
Shoer: Right well if you could lift up your foot perhaps we could get a pair roughly the same size?
Me: That's a good idea. But, could you get them a bit bigger?
Shoer: Why?
Me: Well, these ones are a bit small for me.
Shoer: Any idea how small?
Me: They seem to be uncomfortably small for me. Can you find a pair that's comfortably larger.
Shoer: I'm sorry, but we're all out of comfortably larger shoes perhaps you could try Bond Street they sell comfortably larger shoes there.

Indeed, I have had great difficulty in finding shoes in my size, colour and for all my needs. I have had to resort to creating my own shoes.

I have found that by creating a paper-mache of paper, glue and water in a bucket. And then putting my feet into the bucket I am able to make a resonably decent pair of shoes. By then sticking half-metre square pieces of carpet to the underside I have a comfortable surface on which to walk on. I usually wrap the shoes in tape to make them waterproof.

I have found that these shoes tend to wear better than those elsewhere and may be worthwhile trying out yourself.

Hope this helps

Friday, September 01, 2006

Trash conservation...

Some countries are getting rather worried about the amount of trash (or rubbish to the non-technical) we refuseniks are generating. Well, I've been searching around and have found the following article.

Scientists have recently performed a large and detailed simulation on the effect of increased trash production and burial in land-fill sites. The results show that the land-mass increases roughly as the square root of the number of people occupying the land. Which means, in small countries like the USA and Russia that we generate enough material to increase the land mass to accomodate the influx of people into that country alleviating the space crisis and pressure on house prices.

Their simulations also reveal that the new land mass would be lighter than the existing land mass (by virtue of the high non-degradable plastic content) allowing the new land mass to rise with rising ocean levels. This technique is currently being used in Venice (or Venus to the non-technical) where huge amounts of non-degradable trash from China are being dumped. We are already seeing the benefits: Venice has risen by approximately the length of Berlusconi's nose in one year.

In a related piece of research archeologists have unrefutable evidence that Siberia and the mid-west of the USA are the direct result of bronze-age and iron-age landfill sites.

We have to be thankful that large supermarkets (shoporamas to the non-technical) are increasing the amount of packaging (by packaging the packaging) and we have to be thankful that the governments will be asking us to pay more to dispose of the packaging's packaging as we are really securing our country for our future consumers.

With my rubbish I for one am building a new extension to lower Russia. What are you doing to help?