For the last umpteen years I have lived in Doctor Marten’s shoes; they are great, comfortable and long lasting. Yesterday I noticed that my current pair (which I bought in December 2008) had developed a split on the side of the sole. It’s been my experience that about two months before you wear the soles away to nothing, they develop a characteristic split in the sole. This split is Gods way of telling you to get a new pair. Or Blind Chance’s way of telling you to get a new pair, depending on your personal religious persuasion.
Doctor Marten’s shoes are reliable, hard wearing but aren’t very cheap. Doctor Martin’s shoes (note carefully the spelling) are equally reliable and hard wearing, but don’t come up in the same eBay searches that Doctor Marten’s shoes come up in. The difference between an “e” and an “i” is trivial to you and me, dear reader, but to an eBay search the difference is about thirty pounds.
It pays to try mis-spellings when searching on eBay. I did exactly that this morning. Including postage costs, a pair of these shoes (spelt correctly) was going for an average of fifty quid. However a pair identical in all ways (except for the spelling) could be (and was) bought for twenty quid. Admittedly when buying DMs (of whatever spelling) from eBay, they are usually postman’s shoes. And they come complete with the Royal Mail insignia, but personally I quite like that on the side of a shoe.
Whilst I’m on the subject of trivial spelling mistakes, for the last two years this month for me hasn’t been November, but Mo-vember. In 2008 I grew a rather dreadful moustache which hovered somewhere between Oliver Hardy and Adolf Hitler. Last year I went for the full mutton-chops. This year I’m giving the whole moustache thing a miss. My fellow moutacher isn’t keen to do it for a third year, I don’t actually like the “facial hair experience” and bearing in mind the whole thing is sponsored-for-charity, last year only two thirds of the people who pledged money to us actually stumped up.
I might have another go next year, but for those of my loyal readers who feel they might like to sponsor a moustache, might I suggest you click here to do so.
I have warn DMs almost continuously since I was 11, the only time I didn't was when I was really skint and bought a cheap pair of lookalikes for about £10 less which lasted less than 3 months rather than the normal 18-24months of daily weekday wear I get from my DMs. For the past 12years I have been getting mine through work, as I get a £40 annual allowance for safety shoes which means they cost me £3 out of my paypacket. I prefer the safety shoes as they have the padding and buying them every July means that I am building a nice little stock for the future.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very useful site for getting those cheap items from e-bay because people can't spell or mistype things: http://www.fatfingers.co.uk/