The Wrong Answer

This evening Robbie sat in the lounge contemplating his feet before announcing his momentous decision. He is going to wear shoes for the funeral tomorrow! Due to the idiosyncrasy of his feet Robbie really needs the support of boots to keep him safe and upright, but has a pair of shoes which he reserves for very important occasions. He rather reluctantly bought the shoes for our wedding, but he rebelled by wearing loud 'Robbie style' socks! This is taken from a previous blog entry

Robbie's choice of socks is almost as eclectic as his taste in shirts! He likes loud colours, and why settle for one loud colour when you can have loud stripes – he likes stripes! They even put in an appearance at our wedding. I have written before about the compromise we reached concerning Robbie wearing shoes rather than Dr Marten boots to get married. The little detail I had overlooked was the socks. On the day we were getting ready to leave the house when Robbie emerged wearing a very nice suit and bare feet. In his hand he carried a brand new rather noticeable pair of pink socks. There was no way that he was leaving the house in those, and after a forlorn attempt to fight his corner he headed back upstairs get some different socks. I thought nothing more about it until we were asked to sit down during the ceremony. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Robbie’s immaculate shoes and his hideous socks – they were clashing stripes of different blues. I have held a grudge against those socks ever since, but the dratted things never get separated in the wash and they show no signs of wearing out!

Robbie has only worn his shoes once or or perhaps twice since our wedding. It seems fitting really, the first time that Robbie and Chris met it was one of the very rare occasions that Robbie saw him wearing a tie, he was never comfortable in a tie. Robbie is never comfortable in shoes, but only shoes will will do for his friend's final send off.

Thinking of the wedding shoes and the gruesome socks reminded me of another episode related to our wedding. I asked Robbie "do you remember our wedding" he got the answer wrong and his reply "yes, vaguely" elicited a snort of disgust from me. It is not as if he has had a long time to forget, it was only five years ago!

The episode I remembered was instigated by Chris, he and some of Robbie's other colleagues parked themselves on the platform at New Street expecting to see us as our train stopped briefly at New Street. I am not sure if the intention was to embarrass Robbie or to catch a glimpse of me, to be fair we do make an odd couple. Anyway their plan was foiled by Robbie's stomach. When we got off the sleeper we were delayed at Penzance by a rather wonderful bacon sandwich and we didn't travel north on the train that they thought we would. Just in case you are wondering we really did spend all of our honeymoon on trains and it was absolutely brilliant!

Tomorrow will be a very sad day, but Robbie and all those who knew Chris have a wealth of good memories of happier times.

"What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us." ~ Helen Keller