Just like a dependable old friend, my Docs signal the change of the seasons

Hello Doc Martens my old friends, I’ve come to walk in you again. Yes, as sure a sign of the end of summer as the ritual shaking of fists at the sky, the return of my beloved Doc Martens biker boots marks the official arrival of the business end of the year. In all fairness, they are probably the only good thing about autumn, because not only will they keep my feet functioning and dry from here till the giddiness begins again next spring, but by a happy accident, they’ve put me right at the forefront of the climate change movement. Reader, long before we even tipped from the frying pan, I’ve been safeguarding this planet one (heavy) step at a time.

As it happens, I’ve only really grasped the full scale of my general environmental warriorness in the past few weeks. For the first time ever, the breathless press release from the UK announces, it is now possible to get Doc Martens re-soled. No more will these significant chunks of leather and rubber end up in landfill or uselessly sprouting flowers on people’s porches. Now, planet panicking Doc Martens owners can get their shoes and boots repaired through the manufacturer’s official shop in Leeds, reducing the need to buy replacement pairs — a double edged sword for the company’s profit margins, no doubt, but a timely PR masterstroke nonetheless.

Except, obviously, that if Irish customers want to avail of this fantastic new development, we’ll have to fly to Leeds in order to do so, in the process incurring a bigger carbon footprint than if you’d just bunged your old Docs in the shed and forgotten all about them. Alternatively, you could do what I did two years ago and actually set the curve in carbon reduction by just going to a really good cobbler and asking them to McGyver you some ‘unauthorised’ replacement soles for your favourite boots.

Now, just to be clear, I didn’t set out to save the planet by recycling footwear. I just really, really, like my Docs. When one of the soles split and the rain started seeping up into my socks, I presumed I’d just buy a new pair. But I looked online — Covid (and the fact that I have no idea where it is) preventing me from giving the custom to my local Docs shop like a proper eco warrior — and the bikers’ style of my beloved trudgers was no longer available, the world having moved on to shinier things. I suppose you could say I was walking around in the Betamax of Doc Martens.

I shouldn’t have been entirely surprised. I bought the boots 12 years ago, and while a dozen winters might not seem much to more diverse footwear aficionados, aside from my runners, they are literally the only things I ever wear on my feet between the months of October and April. In fact, a quick trip to the calculator suggests that from my initial outlay of €180 — incidentally, by about €140, the most I’d ever spent on shoes — my spend on those boots is the equivalent of about eight cents a day. Which, I’m not going to lie, is way more than I was expecting when I came up with the time-wasting idea of figuring out how much every wear of my Docs costs me, but there you go.

I can’t really explain why I don’t own more shoes. Partly, I suppose, it’s because if I find shopping for clothes boring, then I find shoe shopping so painful it actually angers me. Since the arthritis set into my right big toe, I can no longer wear high heels or shoes that might, by a stretch, be described as pretty — but even that quick shot of poor me-ism doesn’t explain my lack of footwear, since I only have the old Arthur about five years and I’d been exclusively in the old Docs for a good seven years before then. I’ve just never really seen the point in owning a lot of shoes. I get that if you wear the same clothes every time you leave the house, eyebrows will be raised — but do other people really notice if women are wearing the same boots all the time? If they do, they’ve never challenged me on it (though I suppose if you are going to pick a fight over footwear, you’re not going to target somebody who’s perpetually in hole-toeing Docs.)

Anyway, the unauthorised soles are as good as the original (Isaac Jackman, if it doesn’t get him into trouble with the Docs police) and we’re back in business. Autumn is officially upon us.

Next week: how my handbag costs me less than three cents a week.