Humans have been protecting their feet with some kind of covering for at least 26,000 years. Some studies of the bones of ancient humans suggest as long as 40,000 years.

The Egyptians were the first to take this seriously, creating pads of leather or papyrus bound to the foot with two straps.

Depending on region and climate some areas around the world developed shoes independently at different times.

The Romans developed the ‘Calceus’, a kind of shoe slotted at the side and knotted at the front. Different footwear would be worn by the different classes of society. You might say this kind of thinking continues today.

Our modern shoe lineage appears to start at the Crusades with Crusaders needing something a little more substantial to protect them on their long journeys.

Not long after, the real art of shoemaking began to appear and thrive in France, Italy and England.

I remember being told to wear only shoes at school. I also remember being the butt of a few jokes because of a certain style I turned up with that were soon dubbed ‘Rain catchers’. This may have subconsciously turned me off the benefits of a good shoe. They just didn’t seem cool.

My cupboard at home contains footwear for all occasions. Trainers, I don’t train in, cheap shoes I’ve worn once, climbing shoes so intentionally tight they hurt, walking boots that have done thousands of miles and motorcycle boots I don’t wear nearly enough.

I tend to find a pair of trainers I like and wear them till they fall off my feet. This is normally only a matter of months. Being a dog walking country dweller, in the winter I wear a decent pair of welly’s and in the summer I switch between a walking trainer and Velcro strap sandals.

I never thought I was scrimping on shoes. But I now realise I have not really been investing in my feet either. My most expensive footwear? In 1994, as a thank you, I was bought a pair of walking boots for over a hundred and fifty pounds. I still have them today. They keep getting more comfortable.

Recently I bought walking trainers in a sale that would have cost over a hundred pounds and the sales person expounded the qualities of the sole.. “You can replace it with a new one when this wears out” he said.

Weirdly this was a great selling point for me but later I imagined my late grandad scoffing at the lad telling him all of his shoes had been rebuilt at some point or other. That’s what people do with shoes.. Fix them. Not any more it seems.

As I write this paragraph, on a train crossing Europe, I’m having a serious rethink of my footwear philosophy. I may have been a little short sighted in the past. I may have held unjustified prejudices. Recently my feet appear to have had a small and very comfortable revelation.

For the last four days I have been wearing a pair of leather brogues. I was coerced into buying them due to a strict dress code set by the Orient Express. The undertaking of this ‘trip of a lifetime’ had me purchasing all kinds of attire I would not normally shop for.

Shirts, a ‘smart’ jacket, a tux, basically the dress of a person moving in circles other than the ones I’m used to. Everything was ‘off the peg’ none of it bespoke. The shoes I bought were from a major high street store well known for its brand of shoes. At over £70 I was told by the helpful staff these were the best shoes they stocked. I thought £77 quite reasonable, thick leather and an insole comfort system the staff were also wearing. I have spent more to have a logo emblazoned on the side of my footwear.

The verdict?

I can’t remember walking so much and not complaining about achy feet. According to my ‘fitbit’ (a sort of digital pedometer) I have walked over 60,000 steps these last few days. Not a huge amount, enough to have my feet know about it though, and I think my new shoes have something to do about it not being an issue.

Today while popping out for supplies prior to this train trip I stumbled upon a shoe shop. Not a normal shoe shop. Bálint Masschuhe had rows upon rows of beautiful looking shoes. Timeless in style and made from leather.

Inside were meticulous mouldings from customers feet, notes, measurements and specifications highlighting all kinds of minuscule details from arch depth to how much pressure a person places on the various parts of their feet.

I got to chat with the owner and shoemaker Bela Bálint. He recently took over from his late father, the hugely respected master shoemaker Lajos Bálint. A man who’s reputation was known worldwide and was ranked among the worlds best bespoke shoemakers.

His son was obviously proud of the name his father had made internationally and it was equally obvious he felt up to the task of filling his fathers shoes. (Scuse the trite pun).

We chatted for a while and I got to see a world I thought I knew in a whole new light.

I asked Bela why people have their shoes custom made. He told me something his father told him..

“Two things in life not luxuries but absolute necessities, a good shoe and a good bed. If a suit doesn’t fit, it will not concern my health, but if a shoe or bed doesn’t fit, they will directly impact my health.”

Put like this it seems common sense. For a moment it seemed ridiculous to wander into a shoe shop and grab a close fitting shoe to wear because it doesn’t hurt.

 The structure of our feet are unique. Even to each other as no two feet are the same size, even on the individual.

I told Bela how I had recently re-discovered the value of a good shoe but obviously my idea of ‘good’ still had a lot of adjustment needed.

He said that the shoes I were wearing we’re good for “an industrially fabricated pair”. He also said that they would fit better in a year or so.

This seemed a weird concept. Mainly because I forgot it was possible to buy something that lasts years. We live in a disposable society and I try where I can to purchase things that sit outside of fashion. Some may say unfashionable. I like to think timeless.

I learnt a lot from Bela. He looks like he learnt a huge amount from his dad. I am seriously considering buying a pair of bespoke shoes. Just once. I’m not sure I could afford to do it twice.

The wait for a pair of fully tailored shoes from Bálint Masschue can be up to 10 months from your first fitting. Add to this the cost of up to €2000 and you are looking at a serious investment over a pair of ready to wear (RTW).

That said, I’ve paid more for a motorbike that carried me less than a pair of cheap shoes before it ended up in a ditch.

I guess it’s just a matter of priorities.

I am more than a little happy with my new shoes. They may be the best I have ever owned. It’s certainly the best seventy odd quid I have ever spent. Someone once said..

“Shoes are like friends. They can support you.. Or take you down.”

Luckily, these fit better than any I have owned before and it is certainly teaching me a thing or two.

Just as well, as it will be a long while before I can afford anything bespoke. Adrienne Gusoff knew this when she said..

“If the shoe fits, it’s probably too expensive.”

If you want to hear the full conversation with Bela Bálint please click below.

listen to ‘Bela Balint – Shoemaker’ on Audioboo

Written and uploaded on an ipad. ‘Foot notes’ and links will be added to this blog later. (When I’m on a proper computer.)

As I touched upon in a previous blog post, some people change their motorbike every year. If a bike is well looked after, the trade-in price or money from a private sale can go a long way to securing the latest model.

There are I’m sure a heap of reasons for people to ‘trade up’, The wrong choice in the first place, fitness levels, an evolution in riding style, but sometimes it can be just plain peer pressure as other riding buddies go shopping for the latest and greatest spec to roll out of the factory.

Personally I’m not sure there are any great advancements year on year outside of styling and sometimes these can be as subtle as a colour change.

When I rolled up to a Woburn Triumph garage in 2010 I was sat on a BMW f650gs. A bike I felt over complicated for my needs. I had the cash in my pocket for a second hand Street Triple i’d seen advertised and while waiting to take it out for a test ride I was given the Scrambler 900 to try.

I fell in love with it immediately. As I said in my previous blog..

It was everything I wanted in a bike. The ride, the sound, the simplicity. And it wasn’t tuned like a Speeder Bike. It’s a timeless bike as much fun at 30 as it is at 90 (allegedly).

So why mess with it?

To make it mine is the simple answer.

To make it mine and something incomparable to other Triumphs. I looked at all the parts I could fix to the Scrambler. Simple things. Boltonable things. But they are off the shelf and if you hang around a Triumph dealer long enough you’ll be sure to see the guy who has bought them all. And bolted them on. And then everyone looks the same again.

When I caught sight of one of the bikes Spirit of the Seventies had modified, it was like nothing I’d seen before. I didn’t have the cash to go for an all out frame and engine remodeling. But after a couple of long chats on the phone with the MD Tim Rogers, I knew they were the guys i’d like to leave my bike with.

They asked me what I wanted and I created a pinterest mood board of a few things that had caught my eye. I too’d and fro’d uming and arring about what I wanted and Tim was super patient.

As well as the cosmetic tweaks, I had them do some work the bike needed to stay mechanically sound and pass it’s MOT.

Work done:

-Front tyre
-Renthal chain and sprockets
-Wheels powder coated black
-Bars and exhaust heat guards powder coated
-Engine cases powder coated
-New gaskets/oil for the above
-Tank, side panels painted by Graham at Revolution
-Progressive rear shocks
-Oberon indicators (including relays)
-Rear light, number plate bracket
-LSL Clubman headlamp
-LSL headlamp brackets
-Bespoke leather seat by Viking Vinyl with red stitching. Hide sourced by SOTS from Scotland.

The bike was with the guys for a little over a month. Their workshop and time is in massive demand at the moment and I was just glad they agreed to take it in. I did not expect the great level of continual communication and although it felt weird not having the bike around, I was in no rush I knew the bike was in good hands.

above photos by @SpiritOfThe70s

It was a wet and windy day when I went down to pick up the bike. It was a wet and windy ride all the way home. I didn’t mind. I was on my ‘new’ bike.

And I love it.

Photo taken on my iPhone 4s

Thanks to the guys at Spirit of the Seventies for their great service, hard work and fair price.

If you are looking for something similar or just want to ask them a question, they are on twitter as @SpiritOfThe70s or are easy to contact through their blog.

When he died he took a thousand stories with him. And just as many songs. He was a guarded man. The few stories we shared only offered a glimpse of the life he’d lived.

Born in a field in the Ukraine. Before the First World War. Before the Russian Revolution. His mother cut the umbilical with her teeth. A break from picking potatoes. His childhood years saw rural adventures punctuated with death and hunger.

His brother, shot dead for stealing fruit. His father, an officer of the Tzar, died in a prison for being anti-Communist. He left the Ukraine and travelled Russia during the famine. Searching for food and work. Some of the stories I overheard as a child were the background for my first nightmares.

What I most remember, and in some ways is his legacy in place of the missing stories, were his skills. A proud man, an emotional man, his first passions were poetry & music, but denied an education because of his fathers politics, he chose to repair things, to make things, create things.

The first time I fixed something was with him. It was the sole of a shoe. He could make shoes and told me that a handful of simple skills had saved his life more than once. His early life had involved walking countless miles. Away from prisoner of war camps, away from famine. From meal to meal, job to job. I only now understand what he meant when he said  ”If you can fix soles you can save lives.”

He taught me to tie my laces, but with a special knot. He taught me change a plug, to solder, to fix a radio, a TV. He taught me nothing was broken that couldn’t be fixed. And I believed this. Even as I watched him lose the ability to walk, as a worsening limp forced him into a wheelchair. As failing eyes made him blind.

Most of the stories I now remember came from afternoons sat with my housebound Grandfather. A man too proud to seek medical attention until forced. A man who occasionally told me how proud he was of me. Of where I had been, of what I had seen, but mostly that I had listened to him. Learned from him. And that those skills would live on after him.

He shared more stories and tales in his last year than all of the years before. I would sit and listen to him, or we would both listen to his treasured short wave radio. Like our lives depended on it. He could translate the crackled tales from five different languages. He told me words were the only tools left to him.

He gave me his hat telling me there was no weather indoors. He gave me his watch as he could no longer see it. He gave me his shoes with the metal heel taps.

It’s his words though that I treasure the most. That I’m writing here in case I forget to pass them on.

It made him sad to fade away. To avoid death for 91 years and yet have his physical abilities stripped slowly away in the last 20.

He told me “You must make and create while you can. For as long as you can… When I couldn’t find food, I made music. When I couldn’t buy a ticket, I made shoes. There is always hope. It’s the simplest of tools.”

When helping my Grandmother tidy her house the other day, I came a cross a carrier bag under the stairs. It was like I’d found treasure. Inside were a handful of tools and a cast iron shoe repair anvil, a cobble.

These were my Grandfathers tools. His words sit in my memory and now these tools sit in my hands.

I find a beautiful momentum in the journey both these tools and my Grandfathers words have made. It’s comforting to think that there may be a certain immortality to our ideas and creations.

If we share.

I don’t grow a beard. Thankfully it grows itself. This allows me to achieve something visible to all with very little effort on my part.

I like it. It’s a mask, its warm in winter, handy with an open face helmet on a motorbike and often it gives people the wrong impression of me. And there is much fun to be had in challenging peoples first impressions.

If it starts getting in the way of my joy of food though, I treat it like a farmer would a hedge that encroaches on a right of way. I hack it back.

Sometimes though, like this morning, I just feel the need to shave it off and start again. A metaphorical burning of the stubble. A facial spring clean. When I’m really old I think I’ll take it’s growth more seriously. There are some epic beards on wizened men and I find these bearded elders the most interesting of people. Their sponge-like faces soaking up stories, history. When I grow up I want to be like them.

He loved his food.

In his final years, housebound and slowly going blind, conversation, food and the radio were his only real pleasures. My Gran looked after the food side of things. She would cook all the dishes he enjoyed through the 50+ years they were together. Italian from her side, Ukrainian from his, and then some dishes somewhere in the middle.

The main reason for adding ‘Eat in A Ukrainian restaurant’ to my 40at40 list was to relive some of the dishes. Relive and compare. Even when I visited the Ukraine via Russia during the Russian Constitutional Crisis in 1993 I never got to eat in a restaurant. I ate on the street, on trains and with family.

The hunt for a Ukrainian restaurant was not as easy as I thought it would be. Mainly because it appears the Ukrainian community prefer to eat at each others houses, or at the many Ukrainian societies dotted around the UK. I did think of actually visiting the Ukraine but I thought that a little extravagant what with all the other things I plan to do this year.

Luckily after a little googling and a couple of phone calls, (one to the Ukraine) I found the Albina. The only other London place listed was called ‘Divo’ and had the most incredibly bad reviews. It had also shut, luckily down.

So I headed to the Albina.

239 Barking road was a short walk from the overland train. As I entered I could hear a conversation at the end of the long thin restaurant between what seemed like regulars or friends of the barman. No words I understood though.

Under the cartwheel light fittings, the walls were adorned with painted plates, crockery, dolls and wooden medieval weaponary.  Windows painted on either side gave you the impression you were on the shores of a cartoon lake. I walked between the heavy set tables made of varnished logs towards the beach type bar in the bottom corner opposite the toilets. The only word the barman spoke that I understood was “Wodka?”

I used the universal nodding system I fall back on when anyone offers me a drink. I sampled two drinks, a peppery almost chilli laced Vodka and one made from birch sap. This was new to me but I have since learned that 12th century slavic manuscripts refer to the use of birch sap in alcoholic drink making. I’d certainly drink them again. In fact I did just that almost immediately.

After meeting the waiter I picked a seat by the door (just in case) and ordered one of my favourite meals, Borscht.

When it arrived my hunger allowed a pause long enough to take a photo before I was overcome by the aroma and appearance. It was truly delicious.

An apple juice accompanied my decision making where I had to decide between a main and a sweet or two mains. I went for the latter. I am more of a lover of the more substantial dishes and I wanted to experience as much as I could. Afterall I had no idea if I was ever to return.

I followed the Borscht with with Draniki, a kind of shredded potato cake served with mushrooms, chicken and sour cream in a pot. I think the pot more Belorussian than Ukrainian but I could see by the clientele popping in that there was certainly fusion dishes on the menu.

My final main course was Golupsie. Minced beef, rice onion and veg wrapped in cabbage leaves and sometimes baked in a sauce. I knew this dish was to push me over the comfortably full line, but this was an important taste from my childhood and a dish that I miss very much. It reminds me of dinners with my Granddad more than any other dish.

I really enjoyed my experience at Albina and am so glad I not only added this option to my list, but that I discovered this interesting and unique restaurant. The service was great and I’d love to return with friends for a proper drawn out night of food, drinking and if it’s on a Saturday, perhaps some embarrassing dance.

The final bill came to £26.90 as I think a few of my ‘sample’ vodkas were omitted. Wonderful value for such hearty simple foods that look more complex when cooked, presented and delivered confident in the knowledge these are great and honest dishes.

Here is some audio I recorded as I left.

If you’d like to help me complete an item off my list please let me know. Or simply subscribe to the blog or follow the tag 40at40 to see other posts as and when I complete them.