For me, the best thing (possibly the only good thing*) about having to work from home for a year and a bit was being able to wear slippers all the time, or walking boots when I went out, and not having to worry about shoes.

Longtime readers may recall that I have always had problems with shoes: I have slightly narrow high-arched feet and I have spent my life buying shoes which felt perfectly comfortable in the shop only to wear them once and never again because they cut my feet to ribbons. A few years ago I decided I'd had enough of this and I wasn't going to buy any more shoes unless I was absolutely sure they'd be comfortable; in practice, this meant that when lockdown started I hadn't actually bought any footwear apart from walking shoes/boots and a pair of sparkly rainbow Converse for at least two years (possibly three) and all of my actually-comfortable work shoes were therefore fairly worn**. And that meant that when I returned to the office I looked at them all, thought "nah" and just wore Converse at work.

And then this week I realised that my feet were hurting, and then worked out that (a) my walking shoes have clearly been walked to the end of their useful life and (b) spending so much time wearing Converse really isn't helping, which means that (c) I clearly need some new shoes***.

And then, obviously, it turns out that for some unknown reason****, finding the right size of the only brand of walking shoes I've ever found that really works for me***** in stock anywhere is surprisingly****** difficult at the moment. I managed to order an incredibly bargainous pair from the Evil Empire, but then realised (too late to cancel) that the reason they were so cheap was because they don't have GoreTex, and what is the point of walking shoes without GoreTex? A lot of searching later, I found one style that had GoreTex and was available in a six and a half, so now I am considerably poorer, have two pairs of walking shoes on the way, and still need to do something about shoes to wear while at work...

*though my morning walks were also a bonus

**quite a lot of them also fall into the category of Things That Clearly Belong To A Past Me; colourful ballet pumps and mary janes are just not things that Current Me is going to wear, and nor are smart knee-high boots

***though I did find that my five-year-old Clarks brogues are still reasonably comfortable; more so that my Converse, anyway

****Brexit, presumably

*****Salomon, which are French

******not surprisingly