Cork is a very small town that has a very notable frontier-town quality to it. Another thing to note is that there are about 11 shops in Cork, and 10 of them are shoe shops (check qype if you don't believe me*). I couldn't work out at the time why this was. Did it rain so heavily that people just needed to replace their shoes every few days? Certainly a very possible explanation. Or was it that they still hadn't grasped crop diversity and, fearing another 'bad season' for potatoes, needed a backup food option? As trapped Chinese miners so often demonstrate, shoes can be particularly handy on occasion.
Anyway I was forced into this shop by the combination of boredom, my father's insistence, and my father's boredom. This shop sold "ecco" brand shoes and advertised so prominently in the window. My parents and I were browsing a mall in Hong Kong about 10 months previously when he had first raved about ecco shoes, upon seeing an ecco shop there, and insisted I buy a pair. I told him then and I told him in Ireland 10 months later that I didn't need any more shoes. The second time I told him though was a lie. He knew it and I knew it. I had come from China wearing cloth shoes - ideally suited to strolling in Beijing's dry climate, cycling between its generously spaced bar areas, and jumping through its bureaucratic hoops - which at 8rmb (76p / 92¢ presently) clearly weren't made with the sort of materials needed to endure the climatic limits of mankind's habitable environment. It's actually a wonder that people in the UK and Ireland haven't evolved with webbed feet. Saying that I did actually have a boss once who had a webbed hand... I suppose it just takes time... and incest. Anyway as we walked past this shop I could smell my rancid shoes degrading with every squelching step and I wasn't going to argue very much with my dad, who already had his wallet out.
The staff were very polite, given the state of my current shoes, and helped me to find a suitable pair of ecco's finest "genuine leather" slip-ons (no time for lace-ups in the 21st century, and whatever happened to velcro?). They didn't really fit but were comfortable enough and shoes always take time to wear in anyway. I was just very glad to have relatively dry feet for about 10 seconds. Dad was right too.. they are very good quality... very durable... and you can tell they were made to last. Really this review is about ecco shoes, as I didn't really notice anything worth mentioning about the shop.
On a final note I did eventually find the 'Achilles Heel' (not even sure if that counts as a pun... and I'm certainly not sorry if it is) in ecco's design. A few weeks ago I drank a heroic amount of Chinese rice wine and was consequently sick on my ecco shoes... they had almost completely dissolved by morning. Told you, dad. read more
