One for the road: Slippin’ and a-slidin’

The scope of human happiness is as open-ended as the blue skies above. Boundless. Borderless. Infinite. It has no ceiling, it knows no walls.

In saying that, there is one thing and one thing only that can reliably take a man as close to the final frontier of delight and excitement as one can get.

New trainers. New, virgin, crisp, untouched trainers.

Yes, you could spend the day imbibing the finest intoxicating liquor money can buy, cavorting with the best looking woman in West Tyrone (she’s 26, from Carrickmore, and only comes out at night), and end the evening standing atop a star-lit Slieve League, gazing across the broad, brilliant Atlantic, and still you wouldn’t have glimpsed the feeling of utter fulfillment that comes with the unboxing of a new pair of trainers. And that’s before you even put them on.

And this isn’t just a me thing, obviously. For millennia, many of our great, visionary artists have spent their mortal time meditating upon the soul-completing properties of new trainers – or shoes or sandals or whatever their archaic equivalent of trainers was. Even in recent times, the list of modern day luminaries who have dwelt upon the eternal topic of fresh sneaks is breathtaking: The Arctic Monkeys, Paul Simon, Elvis Presley, and, most recently, Paolo Nutini, who distilled the words of a thousand prophets when he sang, ‘Hey, I put some new shoes on and suddenly everything is right’.

Anyway, I was once a wile man for new trainers. That’s back when I knew the craic – about the soul and how to nourish it.

Every time you looked down, my feet were adorned by yet another set of sparkling sneaks.

Converse. Vans. Nikes. Adidas. High tops. Baseball boots. Skate shoes. I’m telling ye, leather, suede or canvas, it didn’t matter, my feet thought they belonged to the high king of some foot worshipping dynasty. But they didn’t. No. They belonged to me.

As you might imagine, I was out a clean fortune, but I couldn’t have been happier. Fresh feet and fleeced; that was my motto back then. Who needs money in your pocket when you’ve got magic on your feet?

I swear, you could have presented me with a dossier detailing my cumulative shoe expenditure for the year and rather than guilt I’d have felt pride. I’d have felt that warm inner-glow that says you’re doing it right.

Yes, I was living high and grand. I was dancing through life. Then, something happened. Like the sheep who strays from his shepherd, I found myself lost, listlessly tripping into a shoeless abyss.

It was hard for people to watch. That’s for sure.

I went from religiously buying a pair a month, to maybe purchasing a pair every two. Sure enough, two became four, then four became six. Before I knew it, I was going from one Christmas to next wearing the same decaying pair of 12 month-old kickers. People were getting seriously worried. I’d lost the run of myself and there was no getting away from it.

Thankfully, I’ve got over the worst of it now. There’s light at the end of tunnel again.

I started the winding road to recovery some time last year. Sure, I’m not buying with the frequency, nor the gusto, that I used to, but I’m getting there.

But every road has its humps. Even angels step on their laces sometimes, I suppose. One of my near-copes came this past weekend.

I’d just bought an intoxicating pair of Vans in the town; a gummy soul, growing into a clean, white one, with waves of black suede rising half-way up green canvas walls, complete with a swooshing white line that falls from bottom lace to side of heel. Lethal trainers.

On Saturday night, I took them on their maiden voyage, in to see The Committed in the INF. We were probably going to have our first dance, but I didn’t want to say anything, just in case it didn’t happen.

Anyway, booting it in the road, heart fluttering, feet shuffling, we were getting on great, when, suddenly, I nearly came out on my head.

“Ye dirty, rotten…”

I cursed, gathered myself, then looked along the path, hoping to find the banana skin that had vainly conspired to render me unexpectedly supine, but all I could see was a wee, wet, squishy green bag.

“Ye stinkin, dirty, litterin’, rotten….”

It appeared that someone had done the initial hard work of depositing their dog’s unmentionables in a bag, only to then throw the bag on the footpath anyway.

I took my trainer over to a garden and, like a bull ready to kill, dragged it in fury across the wet grass. I then took a breath (mistake), and, with a dirty sole and a dirty soul, headed in to listen to a brilliant night of (ha ha)… dirty Soul.