De-feeted

Ow.

I made a horrible mistake on Friday night by falling asleep on the sofa.  Waking up with the dogs snuggling up to me was sort of sweet, but this was offset late on Saturday when I made a horrible discovery.

No, it wasn't dog-hair related, nor was it a repeat of an incident in the early nineties when a famous and very talented programmer (and alcoholic) that I worked with came to work with a dried cat-turd stuck to his back after spending the night passed out on his kitchen floor.  No, this horrible discovery happened when I took off my shoes and socks.

Regular readers (heh) will remember that on Friday I went out and about in the big bad world after a week being snowed-in by er, snow.  What regular readers won't know is that thanks to a combination of unemployment making me poor and the peculiarly male habit of having as few pairs of shoes as possible, I was wearing deeply unsuitable footwear.  Instead of my preferred Doc Marten's eight-hole ankle boots, size ten, I was wearing a pair of Tesco's value trainers, price five pounds.  Oh, and a pair of Tesco's value sports socks.

Now don't get me wrong; it turns out that whatever third-world exploited labour it is that manages to produce a pair of shoes that sells for less than a tenner actually produces a surprisingly good pair of shoes. The problem is that they're not even slightly waterproof and once wet will in fact stay wet until put in front of the radiator or some such heaty thing.

Thanks to me traipsing about in the snow for several hours on Friday, my feet were thoroughly wet with the shoes and sports socks combo keeping them good and wet until I took my shoes off on Saturday night.

End result: I have trench foot of the left big toe (okay, immersion foot). Hurts like crazy as the skin has cracked and split as it dried out.

What can I say? I was very busy all Friday and Saturday and once my feet had warmed the wet shoes and socks to body temperature, I simply didn't notice how soggy my footwear was.  Now I'm walking around in bare (and chilly) feet hoping frostbite doesn't strike.  Although if I do lose my toes, perhaps it'll take me down to a cheaper size of shoe.