Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Sneakers for squeakers
It having been ruled that I would be walking by myself if I continued to wear my Nike squeakers, it was clearly time yesterday to make our way again to Niketown again, on this occasion open. I explained to the various eager assistants who tried to help that I needed some new trainers which did not squeak and were not mainly made of netting. After a while it became clear that first netting was this year's thing and that second this year's thing was nearly over & stocks were running down. Which meant that they had nothing much in my size, netting or no netting. Furthermore, no netting seemed to mean buying football boots or at least something rather too stoutly built to be suitable for walking in for hours every day. They were a bit shifty on the subject of squeaking but as far as I could make out my trainers did not squeak by design but the interior sprung heels did sometimes squeak by accident. One of the assistants even confessed that his had squeaked for a bit. In the course of all this I find out that there was indeed a fair bit of interior sprung in the heels with a fair bit of give when you landed on them.
So, disappointed, we leave the London HQ of the Nike operation without buying any shoes. I observe in passing that while the place was rather noisy it was also rather spacious. So one could cope.
Next stop was a sports goods shop on the other side of the road, possibly Foot Locker. This was even more noisy and not at all spacious, but they did appear to sell trainers other than Nike. Maybe I could escape the netting. But the assistants here were not in listening mode. I was taken straight off to the Nike display, complete with netting. One assistant tried to sell me trainers which were far too narrow and another tried to sell me alternative inserts for greater foot comfort at an additional £10 or so. Once again, we leave without making a purchase.
Disappointed on the trainer front, we turn our minds to the problem of tins for bread baking. I have got the idea that if I let the second rise run for longer, maybe I would get better white bread. But as things stand, if I let the second rise run for longer, the rising dough first does a mushroom over the edges of the tin and then is apt to collapse. So the thought is that I need tins deeper than 2.75 inches. So into the Oxford Street John Lewis and down into the kitchen department. Lots of baking tins of all sorts. Including something which is just the ticket at 3.5 inches deep - the catch being that they cost £26 a pop. Supposed to be the business, just the thing for the busy, professional standard baker, from Mermaid (http://www.mermaidcookware.com/). But I thought that the £10 a pop I paid at Lakeland for the ones that I am using now was bad enough.
Break for lunch at this point at Pontis (see 2nd August) where we had a very decent and reasonable lunch. Good decor, good staff and not too crowded. And we learn that the better Italian restaurants serve their very own version of poppadoms, flying them under the banner of 'mixed Italian breads'. We also had some very fine green olives, something more than an inch long.
BH then suggests that House of Fraser do kitchenware and that there is one of those a bit further down the street. Up to the third floor where we find that they do indeed to kitchenware, including bakeware. They don't do a deep tin but they did do a bigger one, a touch heavy but which might amount to the same thing. Own brand job at £10 a pop, so we snapped up two of them. BH being rewarded by the information that Mary Portas might possibly be downstairs, a lady famous in our household for making television programmes about hotels which BH loves and I loathe. Sadly she had escaped by the time we made it to her part of the shop. By way of consolation prize, we visit the ladies' fashions floor and part with a few pounds there.
This morning, moving from the top to the bottom of the market, I enter TKMaxx in Epsom. Where I find that they have lots of trainers for men, a lot of which are from Karrimor (the people who made my very satisfactory 30 years old bicycle panniers) and few of which are in my size. But they do have a pair of trainers in my size, without netting (perforated thin leather instead), from an outfit called Airwalk of which I had never heard. But which Google later reveals to be an outfit which is very into people who do skate boarding, stunt biking and surfing. They also sell shoes. Elaborate web site but not in the same league as Bacardi or Nike: see http://www.airwalk.com. Perhaps they are more into niche markets than mass markets. And what is more, a site search revealed neither the name nor the number of the shoes that I had bought, although there were things which were quite similar. Are TKMaxx into selling dodgy clones from the wrong part of the far east?
But all that is afterwards. The things seems to fit and at £20 instead of the £80 one might pay Nike, it seems worth a try. Put them on outside the shop and proceed on my morning stroll, at the end of which I am fairly sure that the things do not squeak. On the other hand they are neither as pretty as Nikes - which while sometimes a bit young for me are mostly well designed. You are buying a genuine fashion item - nor as comfortable. Time will tell.
# posted by Jim @ 10:46 AM 
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5th October 2011. Now broken in. Warmer than the Nikes and a harder walk - one can feel the acorns underfoot - but an entirely satisfactory & comfortable walk.
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