I like my shoes. Not in a girlie, “Oh my god aren’t these just divine!” kind of way. In the way that I have had them for a few years, and they are very comfortable now. So, when they need repairing, I repair them rather than risk buying some new ones (they were quite expensive, it is not that I am tight).

I dropped them in to be resoled at a local shoe repairer, and then a few days later popped back in to pick them up.

“Hello, I would like to pick up my shoes please.”

“Sure, here you go. That’ll be £26 please.”

I reach into my wallet and hand over a card.

“Oh, sorry, we don’t take credit cards.”

I grumpily put back my credit card, and swapped it for a debit card.

“Err, or debit cards. We only take cash. The banks make enough money out of me already.”

“Cobblers!” I said, having waited almost thirty years to say that to an actual cobbler (despite growing up spitting distance from Northampton, if you can spit fifteen miles). It is possible I suppose that subconsciously I have only been getting my shoes repaired all this time, simply to await a moment like this.

But now I was stuck. I only had £20 in cash on my person, but I really needed the shoes.

“I’m sorry, but that’s our policy, it says so on the door” he commented, ignoring my cobblers pun that no-one will ever have made before and whilst pointing at the postage stamp sized notice on the shop door.

“It’s a bit backwards isn’t it, cash only? Where did you send them to be repaired, 1975?”

“Yeah, funny, but I’m not giving the banks any more money from me, it costs me a lot to use cards as payment for small things.”

“But now I have to go to a cash point, which is out of my way, then come back here, so it is actually costing me, the customer here, more money to do business with you.”

“I see your point. Do you want the shoes?” he asked, bringing a swift end to the debate.

“Well, yes!”

“The nearest cash point is in the town.”

I returned that lunchtime after using my valuable break to visit a cash machine. He was not there and his assistant cobbler was even less interested in my plight. Nor did he offer me the opportunity to say, “Cobblers!” again. Which was disappointing.

Honestly, I will not return to that place. Unless I can not find another place that does repairs when I next get a hole in my shoe.

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