(unless I happen to be with a friend who's heard me give the answer countless times - I may be happy to go through it as many times as necessary, but a few of them are probably tired of hearing it again and again). Yes, I'm referring to the question "Why aren't you wearing any shoes?". The answer is made up of loads of little straighforward component answers.
1. I really find it more comfortable in a lot of ways. My feet get hot. REALLY hot. So do my hands in fact, though no-one seems to wonder why I'm not wearing any gloves. Unless I can get fresh air circulating around them to carry the heat away they get very uncomfortable. They also sweat a lot, and if that sweat has to stay put then that can only lead to an unbearable smell. A simple strappy pair of sandles, or flipflops would leave the soles covered most of the time and the heat would build up. It wouldn't make much difference at all that the rest of the foot is exposed to air. My feet just don't work that way.
2. It's easier to walk in a lot of ways. Not wearing shoes allows all the wonderfully evolved bone and muscle structures in the feet to be fully exploited. As much energy as possible is conserved from one step to the next. I feel light on my feet and I feel able to walk much further and for longer time. Even more so that I don't have the mentally draining effect of heat build up. I also have some joint problems which as far as my doctor can tell are a combination of mild injuries to the structure in the past to my knees and ankles (ice-skating, hockey, rugby and an epileptic fit if you're wondering), and some kind of auto-immune condition that doesn't seem to be serious enough to merit medication. Going barefoot makes things an awful lot easier.
The conversation then usually goes towards listing all the potential negatives of going barefoot and asking what I do about those. They usually cover
1) sharp objects/broken glass
2) extreme temperatures
3)dirt and disgusting things to step in
4)being stared at and confronted by difficult people
The first three aren't as big a deal as you might think. Millions of years of human evolution has given us skin that is very good at adapting to the ground. People don't realise it because they spend so much time in shoes that their skin doesn't get the chance to do what it's supposed to. But what it's supposed to do is thicken and toughen so that it can handle pretty much anything. It's best not to dive straight into the deep end from the beginning, but using your eyes and common sense will make avoiding things you don't want to expose your feet to at first pretty easy. Eventually you'll find that you can walk right through broken glass, hot and cold weather, rough pavements etc. become less something uncomfortable and more something interesting of which your senses make you aware. It's like coming out of a dark environment into daylight. If you're not careful it'll blind you, but that doesn't make daylight inherently dangerous. You just have to give your eyes a chance to adapt to it first. Then you can enjoy it.
As for dirt and disgusting things, well skin is also pretty good at keeping what should be outside outside. It's waterproof. Nothing will just seep in. I admit I do have to shower every day, but then so do you. That's all it takes to get the dirt of my feet, and that includes things I may inadvertently step in from time to time, and I don't have to worry about them.
I'd say the latter item on the above list is the biggest barrier to going barefoot for two reasons. First of all it's the main reason fewer people go barefoot than would otherwise because they just don't believe it's socially accepted and so do not want to stand out. This of course is self-perpetuating - it takes people to say "I want to do this badly enough that I'm not worried", and enough of those people to go ahead and literally walk the walk for others to realise that it's not such a big issue and join in. Secondly getting past that hurdle doesn't make confrontational people go away. It's something that you have to keep dealing with and there are all sorts of people out there who are desperate to convince you that what you are doing is wrong (my own mother among them).
I'm lucky enough to live in a country that prides itself on people minding their own business. Over in the USA where most of the
Society for Barefoot Living members can be found everyone seems to want to interfere and cause trouble to the point that people can't so much walk into a shop without shoes on without someone accusing them of attempting to set up a lawsuit or citing a bogus health and safety law. The SBL discussions are full of such accounts which is rather depressing reading and one of the reasons I wanted to get the following down (I'll be emailing it over to them as well) to show that at least not everywhere is like that. That said, I don't believe I have anything like enough followers to attract a lot of comments (or any for that matter), but I've seen so many people show their negativity online, commenting on other articles and blog posts. They think they know better about going barefoot than people who go barefoot. It's rather amusing, but at the same time the ignorance and arrogance in the world is pretty frightening, when the anonymity provided by the internet makes people feel free to spout whatever they like without thinking.
So anyway, it's approaching October - the time of the year when, on paper at least, things start cooling down as we head through Autumn towards Winter with the Summer well on its way. It's not too cold for me to go barefoot yet. Nowhere near. If I want to be really stubborn I'll go barefoot in the snow, and enjoy it, but that's another story. My point is that this would probably a good time to mark as the end of summer for the purpose of getting a few things down. In the last five months, May, June, July, August and September I've probably not had anything on my feet for more than a total of 24 hours. A few gigs and one or two job interviews and that's about it. In that time I've been to meetings, football matches, other gigs, a holiday abroad and been on plenty of trains and buses, in plenty of pubs and restaurants and pleasantly encountered next to no resistance, either physical or human. In fact what I'd really like to do is document all the acceptance and positive feedback I've had instead.
I was coming back late one Sunday night from my dad's birthday dinner in a restaurant up in Cambridge. I'd got the train to Tottenham Hale and planned to go home using the London Overground to avoid Zone 1 and save myself a bit of money on the fare. I ended up sharing the last train from Gospel Oak to Willesden Junction with a young lady from Chicago who was over in London to study, by chance at the University where I'd done my degree and had asked for directions to get home given that the tubes were about to stop running. My bare feet came up in the conversation, as they often do - like a personal special case of Godwin's law almost - and I answered a lot of the usual questions. Her response to most aspects were "that's so funny" - Americans will have to help me understand the subtle nuances of her use of the word 'funny' because I don't think she just meant outright strange, but she certainly didn't mean risible or entertaining either. Perhaps just good old unusual. She told me about the NS3 (No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service - I've always wanted to go into a place displaying such a sign and say "How can you be serving that lady and this gentlemen when there's a sign outside forbidding service?!) signs, and I mentioned that we just don't have them here. And it made me think that those signs were what stopped people going barefoot in the states more than anything else, while here it's generally a fear of attracting unwanted attention for evading what appears to be a social norm.
I've been barefoot to football matches at several grounds now, those being Loftus Road (of course), Deepdale, Vicarage Road, Goodison Park and Craven Cottage. Goodison Park was this August - my first ever visit there. I went up on the club coach, the driver was perplexed and kept asking me loads of questions and I don't think my answers ever really shook his disbelief, but seeing me go through the whole day and journey without any shoes said it all to him instead. While I blog about QPR often enough I'll not include any kind of match report except to say it was a fantastic day out (Rangers won 1-0 by the way). But I just want to give an honourable mention to the stewards at Everton. While queuing up for the turnstile to go in, one of them pulled me aside. I raised my arms expecting to be searched, but instead I was just asked why I wasn't wearing any shoes. I gave the straightforward "I prefer not to wear them" reply. My interrogator was puzzled but his colleague butted in at that point saying "Oh yeah, some people are like that. It's fine." He then said to me, "just so you know, First Aid's available inside, to the right hand side." That's what I like about football. One of the last bastions of "We do not accept liability for injury or theft". I can get on with my life my way, and any problems are mine.
I had a similar encounter with Easyjet on the way to Spain for a week's holiday on the Costa Del Sol. I went through security and my passport and boarding pass had fallen out of my jacket pocket so I nearly left them behind at the other side and had to go and grab them. When reunited with my essential documents a lady asked if I needed to retrieve my shoes as well. I just said "No" and moved on. People can be puzzled. They don't quite know how to deal with me sometimes, but they know I'm not a threat so they don't interfere. It's a shame people don't work like that in the USA. I then went and boarded the plane (no, it wasn't that simple, I just missed out the 90 minute wait in the departure lounge because it's of no interest ;-) ). While taking my seat a stewardess spoke to me about the dangers of going barefoot on a plane and was desperate to make it clear to me that they would not be liable for any injury. She was being a bit over the top - I said to her the aircraft is much safer than a lot of places I regularly go barefoot - but I also had to say to her I'm much happier to have the freedom and accept responsibility for myself.
So I was able to enjoy a week in Spain barefoot - I made a point of not taking any shoes at all with me. I did hit a USA type barrier in one supermarket. I hadn't noticed before going in, but there was a sign on the window, with diagrams to make it clear to non-spanish speakers. We were about 3/4 of the way through the shopping we needed when someone from security decided to tell me I couldn't be in the shop. I don't really have enough Spanish to have a full conversation so I gave up and waited outside. A bit disappointing but it was a unique defeat.
I had one other quasi-confrontation on the last day though, just after buying a ticket on the Costa Del Sol railway at Malaga Central. Once I explained in broken Spanish I was barefoot for medical reasons (not strictly true, but it does help with my joint problems, though of course I'd have been barefoot anyway) and whipped out my disabled person's railcard, which I just happen to have because of epilepsy, SeƱor Seguridad suddenly became all apologetic and backed off.
Incidentally I'd normally feel rather hesitant to play the disabled card (quite literally in this case), but as it happens, one of my knee injuries, made less of a burden by going barefoot, came about during an epileptic seizure, so there is at least some connection there. Plus, it was on the way to the airport at the end of a fantastic week in Spain, made all the more enjoyable by not taking any footwear with me at all, and I wasn't going to let anything mar it at the last minute. Not to mention that while I may have blundered my way through a more substantial dialogue in French or Italian, it just wasn't going to happen in Spanish and I just wanted to get the other side of the ticket barrier with my girlfriend so we could head home.
It appears the weather followed us back to London and I'm certainly enjoying it this week. Meeting up with some other London barefooters on Saturday and hoping it'll last at least a few more days. But then I get to enjoy it just as much when it cools down, and maybe some snow in the winter which is great for surprising the general public among other things. I've come to be amused by looks of surprise on other people's faces now instead of feeling ashamed or nervous because I know what I'm doing is perfectly ok and hope to desensitise everyone else until it's as common as a tattoo or piercing.