I don’t really approve of “branded” clothes in as much as I think if a company wants to advertise then they should PAY to advertise on an advertising hoarding or wherever. In fact, I positively detest the vogue for wearing labels on the outside of your clothes. I know that I generally don’t buy my clothes from “aspirational” sources but even when I did, I always wanted to be wearing something different from my friends, not something they could identify from my outside-label and go and copy.

There is a famous incident in the Alstead household where I bought a shirt that I thought was quite cute at the time, though the reason why I liked it eludes me now – it was green (urgh) and had hamburgers all over it (double urgh). I think I should say that I was about 15 at the time and very naïve compared to today’s teenagers. It was before I found my style!!! Anyway, a few months after I bought my shirt, my Dad wandered into our lounge wearing the same shirt but in brown. I was so mortified I couldn’t make up my mind whether to throttle him, cry, cut it to shreds with my nail scissors or scream. My poor Dad had really only bought it for a joke but I felt as though the world had ended. Even “before I found my style” I knew that rocking up in the same outfit as your Dad was bad. Very bad. Almost as bad as rocking up at a wedding wearing the same outfit as the BRIDE (yep – I’ve done that too but that’s a story for another day).

But “branding” aside, these are the good, honest boots of a good honest worker – me. Bought in Trago Mills from the men’s department (I’m pretty sure that you can’t buy women’s steel toecap boots). I was lucky enough to find a pair that is only one size too big for me and with thick socks they are fine. I wear them day-in-day-out when I’m doing my part-time job as a labourer on a building site (the rat’s nest usually but today elsewhere). Today I have been pressure washing the exterior of a building in preparation for painting. Here in Cornwall there is so much rain that all buildings go green in a short period of time. It’s a building that’s not far short of 200-years-old and going a bit crusty round the edges so the pressure washer has been washing off layers and layers of paint in a myriad of colours from black through to white and every colour of the rainbow in-between. It’s got an ex-outdoor-lavvy and although the main items of sanitary ware have been gone for only a little less than six years, nonetheless they are gone with the exception of an ancient loo-roll holder and tap, both of which saw the wrong side of my sledgehammer.

You may say that a pair of waders and waterproof clothes would have been more appropriate than steel toecaps in the circumstances and you’d be right. Well, I know that now don’t I? I didn’t think when I set out from here that I’d end up soaked through to my knickers and coated in a thick layer of rainbow paint chips. Of course in addition to the above, it was only 4⁰C so I was very quickly frozen to the core too – it’s surprising how quickly you lose body heat when you are wet. There will need to be another pressure wash before the walls are ready for painting I’m sure – 200 years of other people’s lives can’t be erased in a single go. In any case, the building deserves to be properly looked after so I’m going to take good care of it. I wonder whether it’s possible to buy steel toecap boots and waders for an ancient building to give it the protection from harm it deserves?