In Cape Town, there are these different pockets of people. You get the obvious contrasts of informal settlements (shacks lined up back to back, made of anything, such as corrugated iron, old signposts, bits of plastic and cardboard, and ‘recycled’-stolen-building materials) and mini palaces, complete with swimming pools, tennis courts and stables up on the slopes of the mountain.

Then you get the less immediately visible lines separating very similar people. What Apartheid in all its meaningless evil tried to do, humans in all their fears, national pride and loyalties have contrived to succeed. You get areas where Portuguese South Africans live, and similarly neighbourhoods where Greeks, Jewish people, Muslims, Indians, Lebanese, Congolese, Nigerians and practically any nationality you could name have set up small versions of their homelands. See, its not enough to draw a ‘black/white’ line here. Over the centuries millions have come here, and call it home.

Obviously the need is to address the separate development policies of the past, and this is happening, so that all may have the same opportunities, access to the same facilities, and educational institutions, and of course the poor need to be fed, and ultimately liberated from the cycles of poverty through restitution and support from both Government and community.

That said, there are these funny places, where time seems to operate differently. Pool Halls where young men with ridiculously sparse moustaches and mullets strut and pose. Where the young women never left that time in the eighties when ruched denim was the rage.

All I wanted to do was to buy a pair of takkies.

Takkies are trainers, or sports shoes. I am reduced to wearing a pair with holes. They were bought after a rainstorm last year. My only boots were wet, so I bought some shoes rather than squelch around prune-footed the whole day. Considering they were of communist bloc quality, they lasted well, but the time has come to replace them.

I trawled every shoe shop in the mall. I wept over sale tables, sobbed over racks and racks of unsuitable footwear, and cursed quietly as I came across great styles that were either preposterously overpriced, or only available in size 12 and up. I have wide small feet (you know what they say about men like that: they need short wide shoes…), and all I wanted was a pair of trainers, not in white or beige. White shoes remind me of being a kid, and riding around on my bike or skateboard trying to scuff them up when they were too clean. Beige shoes are sort of like saying, I hereby submit to middle age. I will now wear these things until I segue to wearing slippers out in public.

I found black trainers, leather-look, that would have had me looking like one of those mullet specials, or a cyber goth, and shiny ones abounded in every shop. Who the heck designs metallic-look takkies, for Pete’s sake? Ferrari takkies, in red? There were none suitable. At the moment thin shoes, the sort known as ‘sand shoes’ in Scotland, or ‘pumps’ in England are in. They make me look like I’ve been standing in a bucket of water and my feet have shrunk.

Finally, I came across a really great pair. They had my size. I tried them on. They were like shoe nirvana. They were a neutral grey and light blue, with navy stripes. They were inexpensive and comfortable. I wanted them. I showed them to Neen, who was elsewhere buying children’s clothes (for our children- she’s not that small) who immediately dashed my hopes.

‘They’re women’s shoes’. She said. ‘Definitely women’s shoes’. I looked again. Fair enough, they were on a shelf amongst what were obviously feminine shoes. But couldn’t the shelf packers have made an error? Too late! The seeds of doubt were sown. I knew, even as I tried to convince myself that no-one would ever know the difference, that I could no longer in good faith wear the things.

Do I thank Neen? Do I regret asking for her opinion? If I had bought them, would I have strolled about with the discomforting feeling of something unplaceable being not quite right?

I came home, a gentle breeze wafting through the hole in my shoes, and resigned myself to keeping them going until next time we go shopping…