Blockaboots – The best shoes (n)ever made.

Being a typical crap bloke who won’t go to the doctors unless I lose a limb in a random chainsaw accident I have been trying to treat my knackered ankle by wearing basketball boots. Apparently, due to all this 80′s retro business that is oh so popular at the moment, hi tops are very “in”.

So there I was, trawling through ebay for said footwear when a thought struck me. What would be the only retro shoe that could definitely never come back into fashion?  The answer was clear, the Blockaboot!

The what? I hear you ask.

Well…

Back in 1976 there was a schools television program called Good Health, the sort of thing you would end up watching if you were off school for the day. Being the seventies, there was nothing else on during the day. It was either that or the test card. The premise of one particular episode was to promote the wearing of sensible footwear by suggesting that everyone’s feet would go on strike (did I mention this was 70′s Britain?) if they were forced to wear ill fitting shoes.

The example of bad footwear was pretty much a sandal on stilts with another sandal stuck to the base. Unfortunately, the whole lesson of the show was lost on me and for the past thirty odd years I have dearly wished to own a pair. The disappointment I felt when I realised that they were fictional footwear was one of the most profound of my life.

I guess the nearest thing ever brought into production was Vivienne Westwood’s Rocking Horse Shoe but they were actually well designed, if somewhat scary (See left). What I want is something that is utter rubbish, ridiculous and will give me endless hours of fun tottering about the house in. In short, the perfect style item.

So if you are in the shoemaking industry, please make me some blockaboots. Or preferably, make enough for the whole world as wars could never be fought if everyone was shuffling about at one mile a day on a rickety platform shoe tied on by a piece of ribbon.

You can see the original t.v show here…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tKBPl3VZXg

Experimental Theatre Vs Designer Vinyl

About a week ago, Dunny Series six hit the shops. Mind you, grazed the shops would be a better phrase as they were barely in them long enough to actually take up storage space. When the exchange rates went all wonky a couple of years back, the price of  a blind box figure worked out about seven pound, eight with postage, and there it has stayed.

When the new batch appeared I was overjoyed that there would be a Gloomy Bear Dunny and a Devilrobots Tofu number, but what really got me doing the Snoopy Dance was that there was going to be another figure by James Marshall aka Dalek. Unfortunately, the dancing stopped when I spotted that, rather than the usual one in one or two in every twenty-five boxes, it was a one in one hundred issue. This meant that buying a pre-opened one would be about thirty pounds, well out of my price range. Truth be told, it wasn’t the greatest piece of his work either.

So here’s the thing, I was flailing about trying to find a justification for spending eight pounds for the chance of buying a blind box and getting a Dalek figure by luck but I couldn’t think of one.

That was until last night when I forked out eight pound for a performance of experimental dance theatre.

It took me about five minutes to work out that experimental dance theatre is a euphemism for something much more diabolical… I can barely type the word… Mime. Eeek!

At that point I made my excuses and left.

So now I have the ultimate justification for any outlay on little plastic toys.

It’s cheaper than five minutes of mime.