Being Down, Looking Up: The Adventures of an Itinerant Shoeshiner

By Rob Walters

This book is about an unusual journey: a unique journey through everyday surroundings. A few years ago Rob Walters decided to become a shoeshine boy. He stowed his shoeshine kit, a tent, and a few items of clothing in a trailer, connected the trailer to his push bike and set off from Oxford to visit the old shoe-making cities of middle England. Along the way he polished many shoes, met lots of interesting people, pedalled many miles, and gained a fascinating insight into his own country from a rather unique perspective.

Rejected by some, welcomed by many, he polished shoes in shopping centres, solicitor’s offices, a kite festival, railway stations, campsites, street corners, and a bewildering selection of pubs.

He polished the shoes of dossers, company directors, criminals, Morris dancers, publicans, bikers, policemen, schoolboys, reporters, a bowling green groundsman, an Icelander, and a Latvian – to name just a few. He slept in fields, in woods, and on the edge of golf courses. He was ejected from the Norfolk Show and welcomed into the offices of lawyers and fruit importers.

During his journey he met members of the Household Cavalry, topless protestors, a homeless joss stick seller, a man who stole baths in hotels, a submariner, a beaten housewife, a disenchanted solicitor, a rubber recycler, a toyshop owner, and two ghost guides – amongst others. All of them had a story to tell: some sad, some amusing. It is their tales and Rob’s own incisive observations that are related in this unusual book. Reading it will transport you to Northampton, the centre of the English shoe making tradition; then through the Fens to East Anglia; back across the country to the Midlands; down along the River Severn to Gloucester; and then over the Cotswolds to Oxford. Progress is at a comfortable cycling pace along the country roads and through the sleepy villages, yet interrupted regularly by diversions into the vibrancy of the cities.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rob Walters
• Release date: Jul 23, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301701933

Rob Walters

I always wanted to write, even as a kid, and now I do. I can transfer the desire to other projects and often do - but if there is nothing much on then I need to write. In my past life in the technical world I was often puzzled by colleagues who hated writing in the way that some people hate maths.They were forced to write whereas the pen had to be wrested from my hand. When my children were young I wrote for them. I clearly recall reading the second chapter of a book I started on the lives of a family of city foxes. I had almost finished reading a section in which most of the cubs were gassed in their earth when I looked up and was amazed to see tears streaming down the faces of my two daughters. The power of the written word? My first full book was published in 1991, It followed many technical papers and articles and was followed by two newsletters which I edited, and mostly wrote, for the next ten years. Four more technical books appeared after which I abandoned the world of technology and began doing my own thing. I travelled, became an Oxford city guide, and wrote a number of books and articles, some fiction, some non-fiction, some published, some not. See my bookshop on the web for all of my books and a shocking experience in an online pub.

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Being Down, Looking Up

The adventures of an itinerant shoeshiner

By Rob Walters

Smashwords Edition II Version 2

Copyright © Rob Walters 2011

The moral right of Rob Walters to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright holder.

www.robsbookshop.com

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Chapter 1. What would it be like?

I am looking down at a small Syrian boy. Aged somewhere about seven years he is dressed in a blue T-shirt on which the word EXECO is printed. The word means little to me and probably even less to him. The boy looks up at me. He is crouching. There is an eager, hopeful, hungry look in his eye. His hands are smeared with black stains. He has a slight squint and is smiling cheekily. He is trying to figure out how to extract as much money from me as possible. He is my shoeshine boy.

The shoeshine trade thrives all over this boy’s country, and in many other countries of the world. It is a predominantly male profession and encompasses a vast range of shiners from little boys to ageing men. The equipment can be as little as a single brush and a tin of polish or, at the other extreme, an emporium of brushes, cloths, polishes, cleaners, sprays and more, together with ornate chairs and stools made of matching mahogany with gleaming brass inlay. It is a profession of furious competition and variable results. It is a trade that fascinates me for reasons of which I am unsure. It is a lowly trade, and yet one that creates intimacy between the shiner and the customer. It is almost exclusively the world of the one-man business and, though there is no obvious career ladder, two 21st century presidents, Lula and Toledo, both of major South American countries, take great pride in the fact that they began their working lives as shoeshine boys.

What, I wondered as I looked down at my Syrian shoeshine boy, would it be like to be a shoeshiner in modern day England?

That idle thought became a recurring one, then finally a demanding one. It was that thought that ultimately led me to the journey described in this book.

My departure point in Oxford was the Three Goats Head pub, an interesting building standing next to the Oxford Union. Though the location had no particular connection with my journey, the pub’s name did. The Three Goats Head is the sign of the cordwainer or leather worker and the pub takes its name from the Cordwainer’s Hall which was located nearby. Shoemakers were cordwainers and hence the shaky connection. My wife very sensibly suggested that Shoe Lane in Oxford would be more appropriate, but by then it was too late. Besides Shoe Lane is not such a nice location and I dearly wanted to start at a pub, even if the Three Goats Head has no decent beer at the time.

There are certain moments in life when the volume controls of the senses are turned to maximum. As I eased the bike and trailer through my back gate at 7.45 a.m. on the longest day of the year, I was aware of one of those moments. The stream behind my home glinted blindingly in the sunlight, the dew soaked grass on the bank of the stream seemed greener than ever, the birds sang enthusiastically and the cool air brushed lovingly against my cheeks as I cycled away from number 18 Paradise Square - my little oasis in the centre of the city - towards the Three Goats Head. I felt happy, very happy.

Then reality began to dull my happiness. The drag of the trailer was very noticeable now that I had loaded the thing up and I began to have severe doubts about my ability to pull it along for hundreds of miles. On the other hand, the packing had gone well and the trailer looked quite pretty with its yellow top and blue bottom. The red flags with shoes stencilled onto them fluttered on their poles on each side, hopefully a warning to following motorists – keep away, there might be a baby shoe on board! The posters added to the effect, peering out from the little polythene windows on the sides and front of the trailer. In the large shopping pocket at the back I had managed to stow a collapsible plastic chair for my shoeshine customers; my fisherman’s stool, which also served as a haversack; and my shoeshine notice board. The body of the trailer was supposed to contain two small children but I had filled it with my camping equipment, my clothes and my shoeshine gear.

I was intensely aware of the stretching and shrinking of the spring which was the only connection between the bike and the trailer. Would it last the journey? There was a thin piece of cord which was supposed to deal with an emergency breakage of the spring – after all this little trailer was supposed to carry two tiny tots. But I suspected that my load was somewhat heavier than a couple of kids; if the spring did break then it would be goodbye trailer.

I had much more confidence in the bike, a steed borrowed it from my son. He had found the thing abandoned and neglected on the streets of Oxford and had renovated it then spruced it up with a spray of black paint. I called the bike Sparky Jack, though this was in fact the name of its mud flaps. The trailer’s name was Spokey Joe so they seemed named for each other. The bike was a thick tyred, large wheeled, sit-up-and-beg style machine with plenty of gears. It was heavy but comfortable to ride and seemed man enough for the miles ahead. The trailer came to me via e-Bay. I was amazed at just how many of these things sell through the Internet. There are new ones regularly placed for auction at a starting price of one pound and over a couple of weeks they mostly fetch £70 or £80. I didn’t want a new one and didn’t want to deprive any young parents of the opportunity which is why I found Spokey Joe. He was second-hand, had a high starting price and high delivery charge. No one seemed interested in Joe so I got him in a single bid.

I felt very self-conscious as I cycled to my launch point, despite the fact that - at first glance at least - my bike and trailer looked little different to a hundred others in the vicinity. Oxford is a bicycling city and, on an earlier trial run, I had received friendly waves from Mum’s and Dad’s who little suspected that I had shoeshining equipment in my trailer rather than kids.

My equipment

I had asked a few friends to come to see me off and the press and local TV were supposed to be there too. As I arrived at the pub, I immediately experienced a wave of annoyance. Someone had parked a car opposite to the Three Goats Head, just where I wanted to set up my kit. I left the bike and trailer just in front of the offending vehicle, then prowled about looking for an alternative spot - without success. There was a man in the car and, since he was parking on double yellow lines, I assumed that he would soon depart. He didn’t. Finally, I tapped gingerly on the passenger window to attract his attention. He slowly put aside some reading material and wound down the window. I felt sure that I had seen him before somewhere, but couldn’t think where.

Are you going to move soon? I asked in what I hoped was a friendly voice.

Why? he asked unhelpfully.

I want to set up my shoe shining stuff just here, I said, sharply aware of how ridiculous this must sound.

Yes, and I’m here to film you, he said with a flicker of a grin. Then I knew where I had seen him before: he was a cameraman for Central TV and, a few months before, had covered a pub tour that I had launched in Oxford. I laughed. He moved the car.

Then, as I set out my stall for the first time, a few friends began to turn up together with my wife and son. I began to clean shoes, acutely aware that this was the first time that I had done so as a professional shoeshine! Of course, I had been trained, and had even polished a practice shoe. But that was a few weeks ago, this was for real and with my own kit, in my own city, with real shoes, good quality ones, on real feet.

As I got down to work, a young interviewer from Central TV joined us. She was an attractive black girl, elegantly dressed and wearing cleanable shoes (shoeshiners quickly become shoe spotters). Soon we were in shooting mode where the interviewer and the cameraman rearrange everything to make things seem more real. Joceyln, my first customer, had to angle his foot in a strange way that suggested a serious deformity and I had to hold the wrong brush in the wrong hand and smile insanely at the camera when I should really have been looking at the shoe or my customer. These are the things we have to do to create a show for the media which they then relay to their public as reality.

It was here that I began to collect money. I had decided to charge £2.50 per shine. Don’t ask me why, it just seemed right. My first customer, Jocelyn, said, God, that’s a lot. But his reaction turned out to be exceptional – price was not an issue for most people. Pete, the lead singer in Veda Park, one of my favourite bands in Oxford, took Jocelyn’s place. The interviewer asked him to say what he thought of the shoeshine journey and he came out with a lot of stuff like:

Rob is doing a great thing here, he’s raising money and doing something different.

I tended closely to his shoes, this was a bit embarrassing. Then the interviewer informed Pete that he wasn’t supposed to know me! So, in the great cause of reality TV he was recorded all over again, this time pretending to be a total stranger. Pete had his son with him and he too occupied the shining chair. At three years old, he made the chair and even the brushes seem enormous. He really enjoyed having his plimsolls stroked with my big horsehair brush and from then on we could barely keep him out of the chair. It intrigued me that the TV crew showed no interest in this. I though that they would, I thought audiences liked that sort of thing. But perhaps it seemed unreal!

The interviewer took me to one side and asked all of the obvious things about my journey. Towards the end, she asked me something that revealed more about herself than it did about me.

Won’t you be lonely travelling around the country all on your own, sleeping in a tent and so on? she asked in a voice that showed genuine concern.

I was taken aback, and for a moment lost for words. Then, bizarrely, those famous words from Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol, ‘Are there no prisons. Are there no workhouses?’ came into my mind. So I said something along the lines of:

Are there no bars? Are there no public houses? I shall be calling into loads of pubs along the way. And I shall be meeting people all of the time. To an extent this is what my journey is all about – meeting and talking to people. The shoe shining will help to break the ice.

I’m sure that’s not exactly what I said, but that’s what I meant to say, and it brought the interview to an end.

After this I shined Tony’s shoes, he was the landlord of my local pub, the Wharf House. In fact, with the exception of my wife and son who both hate the place and the three-year-old lad who was clearly too young to drink, everyone who came to see me off was associated with the Wharf House. Tony’s shoes were in a poor state; I learned later that landlord’s shoes usually are - eaten away by the beer that spills from the pumps apparently. Finally, I cleaned Terry’s tan shoes. I expected some acerbic and witty comments from Terry. He is the most right wing man that I know, yet also one of the funniest. He thinks that I am a communist because I wear sandals! When I’m with Terry I begin to think that I am a communist. However, when I’m with some of my left wing friends I begin to think that I’m a Thatcherite. Everything’s relative in the realm of politics I suppose. Terry knew that I fought tooth and nail to prevent yet another homeless unit being built in our area of the city, consequently the idea of me pedalling off to raise money for the homeless and jobless would take some getting swallowing. Perhaps that’s why he said little about it.

Then, at last, it was time to pedal off. Actually, I wobbled off – these great departures never seem to play well. I tried to wave goodbye to my friends and the TV crew and accelerate away all at the same time, but it didn’t look too good. The effort of propelling that heavy trailer denied me the dramatic goodbye. There was no smooth start with an all-encompassing wave, a smile, and a rapid exit from St Michael Street and off into the great beyond. In fact, I nearly fell off the bike! But what the hell? Already the media was beginning to dominate my journey and that was not what it was all about. I needed the media because the more publicity the journey got the more money I might make. They needed me because the idea of a cycling shoeshiner was entertaining – and their role is to entertain. It was a symbiotic relationship and could work well provided I didn’t turn myself into a circus act for them and they didn’t get too close for comfort.

Off course, these departures are more symbolic than actual. Leaving for an adventure is a gradual process. Despite the months of preparation, it still takes time to accommodate oneself to the fact that the journey is real: that this bike and this trailer with its odd contents were going to be home for the weeks to come. Nothing is real until you are truly on the road, until you have placed some distance between the new ‘home’ and the old one.

Besides, I was stalked. The cameraman had raced ahead in his car and he filmed me as I passed along the Banbury Road in North Oxford. I waved, then wondered if that was the right thing to do. Perhaps this was supposed to be one of those scenes where the subject (me) is supposed to be blissfully unaware of the cameraman toting his large camera, pointing it directly at me like a missile launcher. Then, as I pedalled past the shops at Summertown, the interviewer waved me down. She wanted to record me in action so I set up my stall again and we waited patiently for the cameraman to arrive. Then Jocelyn turned up again. Perhaps, like my dog, he is drawn to the camera. My dog always appears in shots, even when you think he is asleep in another part of the house: as soon as the shutter opens the dog is there. Dominic from BBC Radio Oxford strolled by, noted that I was departing and suggested that I call into the office as I cycled by. Marie, one of my favourite fellow guides in Oxford, approached and, in her usual effusive way, became very much involved with what was going on. Leaving was becoming increasingly difficult. I cleaned the interviewer’s shoes whilst she talked to me and the eye of the camera peered intrusively into our little kerbside get together. She had rather pretty shoes, the first lady’s shoes that I had shone. I found that I had to be particularly careful to avoid smearing polish onto her stockinged feet. Later I learned to offer the ‘on or off’ alternative to ladies, but this shining had to be an ‘on’ the feet session - for the sake of the camera.

Whilst I was cleaning, the interviewer had an on or off moment. She touched her forehead and said, Oh my god I’m wearing my glasses. This hardly seemed an earth-shattering discovery to me, but it was clearly important to her.

Mike, Mike, she demanded urgently of the cameraman, Was I wearing my glasses before – at the other place? I wasn’t. I’m sure that I wasn’t. Oh my god!

Don’t worry, said Mike calmingly. I’ve only got your feet in shot just now.

What a perfectionist, I thought. Would the audience really notice if sometimes she had her specs on and sometimes off? She obviously thought so. Mike’s reassurance was as welcome to me as it was to her. For a moment, I had this awful vision of repeating our shoeshine scenes in their entirety simply to include her damn glasses. But happily, it was not necessary. The business completed she paid me and I placed the payment in the pocket of my fisherman’s stool. That made four pairs of shoes shined in Oxford - not a bad start.

Then I was off. Well, not quite. As Dominic had requested I stopped at the BBC office. Fortunately, they didn’t want me to do a departure interview so I cycled on. Now I was really off - then Mike popped out of another side street and filmed me as I passed by. I really wanted to change my clothes. I had my shoeshine gear on, it was already hot and I wanted to strip down to shorts and a T-shirt – cycling gear. However, this change would look much odder to the viewers than the interviewer’s disappearing spectacles so I plunged on. Mike had threatened to follow me into the country for a parting shot - and he did just that.

As I left Oxford there was a cycle track on the pavement that I could have used, but it was too narrow for the trailer (this became a constant problem during the journey) so I cycled on the road trying to keep well into the kerb. However, try as I might to let it by, a bus kept dogging my progress clearly wanting to sweep past but prevented from doing so by the width of the trailer. At last, the driver found a gap in the oncoming traffic and roared past me - only to stop a few hundred metres ahead to allow a passenger to alight. As I drew near to the bus, the passenger and I came alongside each other. I smiled at him but he did not smile back. Instead, he waved his hand angrily at me and shouted, You ought to keep to the cycle track, you’re blocking the road.

This was shouted aggressively and accusingly. I did not reply – after all where do you start? I simply stared at him blankly as I passed on my way. It was a silly incident and best ignored - but it did take a little of the gloss off my departure. Just a little.

I cycled on, passing the large Sainsbury’s supermarket at Kidlington and the pub on the roundabout beyond. I then pedalled along a very straight road which runs parallel to the noisy A34 dual carriageway on its right. My true departure point was not too far away, this was the junction at which I would veer away from the awful A34 and start heading north on what I hoped would be quiet country roads. Then I spotted Mike up ahead with his camera on its tripod. He had positioned himself on the right hand side of the road just before my turn off point. His head was buried, as it seems to be buried almost permanently, in the viewing apparatus of his equipment. This time I ignored him. I swung around the corner then stopped some 200 metres along the side road with the intention of changing into my shorts and T-shirt. The weather was warm and sunny. Not too hot. A few pretty clouds speckled the sky. A perfect day. Then I saw Mike approaching on foot, the inevitable camera over his shoulder. I thought that he had come to say goodbye and asked him the obvious question, Do you enjoy this job?

Of course, he replied automatically, gets you out and about, different stories, you know.

I suppose that you’ve seen most things by now.

Yep, I suppose I have. One job’s very much like another. Now if you could just pedal off…

I was just going to change.

No don’t do that, just pedal off and I’ll take a last shot as you cycle round the bend. And that’ll be it.

Really, no more shots, no more cameraman lurking on the roadside?

That’s it. This is the last shot, then I’m going to make my way back to the office.

And so it was that I finally left Oxford, the media, my friends, my wife and son. All alone at last, I changed into my lighter clothing in the entrance to a field. I was now feeling a little elated, glad to be finally on my way. I remained a little worried about my ability to pull the weight of the trailer for five-hundred miles, but was relishing the challenge of shining shoes for a ‘living’. I mounted the bike and began to sing my songs.

When travelling I have a collection of departure songs which I like to sing. I am told that I do not sing well, but being of Welsh parentage on my father’s side, I have inherited the desire, if not the ability. Besides, on a bicycle, in the middle of the countryside, there was no one to hear me anyway. Songs like: Leaving, on a jet plane, and By the time I get to Phoenix, and On the road again, simply pop into my mind as I move on. I can’t remember many of the words, but fill the gaps by inventing new ones or just humming. It's a way of saying goodbye, and a way of drawing a line between where I have just left and wherever I’m heading to next. I enjoy singing these songs, I enjoy moving on – even if the enjoyment is tinged with regret at leaving somewhere, or someone, behind.

The nearby villages of Hampton Poyle and Bletchington slipped by quite agreeably. Whilst passing through the latter I peered around for any sign of Bletchington House, a large establishment which was certainly there in the 17th Century and forms the basis of one of my ghost stories. As usual, I saw no sign of it; perhaps it no longer exists.

I was keen to reach villages that were beyond my patch, beyond the area surrounding Oxford where I regularly cycled, motorcycled or drove a motorcar. And, much sooner than I had dared to hope, these villages began to appear and then to pass by in a satisfying blur which meant progress. To the cyclist, the proximity of English villages does generally impart this welcome feeling of moving along, of eating up miles. However, herepowHow there was a village every two to three miles so headway was satisfyingly registering in my mind.

I already had a target. I had decided that there would be no lunch stop until I was halfway to Northampton – and the halfway stage was somewhere in the vicinity of a village with the interesting name of Farthinghoe. I was now cycling through a cobweb of minor roads that linked the villages together and, since there was no particular road that took me towards my goal, I navigated by the villages themselves. As I arrived at one, I looked for the signpost to the next and so on. This gave me a problem, I found that I could not remember a whole string of village names for long, yet I did need to remember them or unpack the map at every junction (sometimes I did just that). The problem is that, attractive though they might be, the names are pretty meaningless: Middleton Stoney, Ardley, Fritwell, Souldern – forms a typical sequence of villages determining part of my journey on that first day. The names play hell with the spelling checker and they played hell with my mind. Fortunately, Farthinghoe reminded me of Farlingaye, the school that my children attended in Suffolk so I could at least remember that one. Better-organised cyclists would have a map stuck to the handlebars or something. I just used a motoring map of Britain: a large book affair that I had stealthily removed from my wife’s motorcar.

I passed through the many villages without adventure. They are quiet places in the daytime, the chance of seeing anyone at all is small. And if you do spot someone, they are usually climbing into or out of a car, their exposure to the outside world being very limited. They spend most of their time inside the house with the doors tightly closed, then make a quick dash down the drive to enter the safety of the car, rapidly closing the door behind them.

I did stop in one of those villages though I could not tell you which one. I was already tiring and had promised myself plenty of rests. I knew that I could not tow the trailer all day unless I took a lot of breaks to allow my body to reenergise. It was during this first halt that I discovered the delight of having one’s own chair. Normally when you take a break on a bicycle journey there is nowhere to sit except the ground, and that is both uncomfortable and generally inconsiderate to the needs of a tired cyclist. Alternatively, you can sit on the bike itself: the last place that you want to place your sore butt. I had brought along a plastic chair for the convenience of my customers so I simply lifted it out of its pouch on the back of the trailer, opened it up and sat down beside the road to write a few notes. This was great, this was luxury. I cycled on towards Farthinghoe with a satisfied grin playing over my face. A travelling chair is a little thing to the car-based traveller, but to the cyclist: oh what a comfort, oh what a convenience.

I reached Farthinghoe at about 1.30 p.m. It is quite a large village lying at the meeting point of a number of roads and dominated by the trunk road that passes through it. I, of course, approached on a minor road, the road leading to Farthinghoe from the village of Charlton. I took an instant and unfair dislike to the place simply because it had a one-way street. Villages should not have one-way streets – that’s a town thing. Then I found the pub, the Fox, and all was forgiven. All was forgiven that is until I found that the place was closed, permanently as far as I could determine! And so my dislike turned to hatred. I cycled around the place in the forlorn hope of finding a person – and I did, I actually found one!

He was standing, smoking nervously, in a small backyard off the long street that lay parallel to the trunk road leading to the west. A longhaired, young man aged around twenty, he was accompanied by an old, decrepit Labrador which, I later learned, was thirteen years old. The nervous smoking was misleading, he seemed casual and relaxed when I stopped to speak to him. He looked at my trailer and said:

You were on the telly!

I didn’t respond to this, after all I had only left my stalker - Mike the cameraman - a few hours ago and thought it unlikely that my departure would have been screened already. I asked him why the pub had closed.

Didn’t you hear, he replied, with all the small mindedness of a villager from long ago, It was burned out some three months ago – deliberate probably, but I shouldn’t say that.

Whilst visiting Yegen, a village in Spain’s Andalucia, I read Gerald Brennan’s book South of Granada. Brennan moved to Yegen in the 1920s and in those days the village was almost completely cut off from the rest of the world. Brennan found that the villagers had no interest at all in where he came from or what was happening in the outside world. It meant little to them. The branch of an orange tree falling onto one of the mule tracks was of much more interest than the world war that in which Brennan had just served. But this young man of Farthinghoe was not a villager in 1920s Spain: he watched lunchtime TV and lived in the twenty-first century in a village riven by a busy main road. Yet he assumed that I would have heard of a fire in the pub of his village. I did not have the heart to tell him that I had not even heard of the village until that morning.

We slid easily into conversation now that the ice was broken. I asked him what he was doing at home on a weekday and he told me that he was jobless; there was no work in the area for him. He also told me that he was a student currently studying politics. It did strike me that he couldn’t be both jobless and a student, but I let that pass. I asked him what he wanted to do, however his answer was vague, most possibilities seem to