For the last 15 years, or so, I’ve earned my daily bread in and around the arena of Unix programming, whether that has been managing databases, programming in various flavours of shell script, writing technical specifications, or teaching programming. When one is living in ‘Unix World’, there are certain conventions that one must adhere to, and the central one is wearing sandals.
Fortunately, being a contrary sort of person, I’ve managed to resist this. I have occasionally succumbed to the continuous 24-hour donning of SuSE Linux polo shirts, the drinking of large quantities of real ale, and the growing of beards (once), but until this year I’d managed to avoid the big one.
But alas, no longer. With the collapse of the database and telecom networking industries in the Thames Valley, where I’d carried out many cosy assignments, I was forced out of my air-conditioned sub-one-hour trips to Abingdon, Camberley, and Reading, and plonked into the sadistic clutches of Thames Trains, Network Rail, and the London Underground, as all the consultancy work contracted into a small hard-core area of central London.
So what’s all this got to do with sandals? Well, I’m a cold weather person. I like snow. I like skiing. I like warm fires, and thick blankets, and cocoa round the hearth. What I really can’t tolerate is hot humid weather of the sort we’ve been having this summer in London and its surrounding regions, especially when trapped within a Thames Train cattle-truck where the windows won’t open and the air-conditioning has failed, or at any time on the Bakerloo line, where I swear the humidity last week hit 763%. Or at least it felt like it did. And if you wear ordinary leather shoes, or even Gortex-breathable light walking shoes, and you have ice-cold Norwegian blood in your veins, as I do, what this does to your feet is turn them into squelching steamed sponges. God alone knows how those poor British squaddies are coping in 50 degrees of heat, in Basra, with standard-issue boots, because the MoD is too preoccupied with the Hutton Inquiry to get them proper desert footwear, but in London I found even a measly 30 degrees was too much to cope with.
Until that is I got my first ever adult pair of sandals. And now you couldn’t part me from them with a Terminator energy pack.
Now most women already know about open-toed footwear, so I won’t trouble them with my novice advice. But for those men who are tempted, but who haven’t been able to face the shame, here’s the Duncan Fortune 500 guide to buying and wearing sandals:
- First of all, just go and do it. It’s not the end of the world. Take a look around you. You’ll find many men are already doing it, and some of them aren’t even Unix programmers! Some of them also have attractive looking girlfriends on their arms! So it can’t all be bad. Be proud. Wear your sandals with confidence.
- Second, don’t buy any with locking plastic clips. These break, and you’re then down £30 quid or so until you get another pair. Get those with either two Velcro straps, at the front and back, or your more traditional hook-and-buckle arrangements if you enjoy being a little more retro than the average guy.
- If you must wear socks, because you’re in some kind of ‘civilised’ office environment, wear plain ones as close to the colour of your sandals as possible (e.g. beige socks for brown sandals). You are not allowed to wear socks at the weekend, unless they are black, and you also subscribe to poking your nipples through string vests, and pulling knotted handkerchiefs over your head. No Englishmen abroad, please. We’re over it.
- Watch out where you put your feet, especially on Tube escalators and train foot-wells. Having 18-stone fat-bodies crimp out your toes with Cuban heels is bad enough with ordinary shoes on. With sandals on, your screams will wake the living dead.
- Avoid cheap sandals. They are the ultimate false economy. Many pairs are designed purely for walking around the garden in. Don’t get these, or you’ll end up with blisters and red running sores, especially if you do any serious walking, say from Holborn to Paddington in 55 minutes via Newman Passage. If you wouldn’t wear your sandals for a whole sunny weekend away on an active walking trip, don’t get them. You have been warned.
Remember, be proud, be cool, be attentive to your foot care, and nobody will notice. Skulk, and you’ll be laughed at from miles off by small children and pretty women on the arms of cool men wearing day-glo purple flip-flops. These men, in London, will almost certainly be Australian, or at a pinch, from New Zealand or South Africa. Our anti-podean friends got over sandals decades ago.
As a recent convert to sandal wearing ways I agree wholeheartedly.
I’ll never look back.
Have you got those freaky suntan stripes across your feet yet?
Alice was right; this is a nerds playground.
Q: “why don’t sterotypes disapear?”
A: “becuase they are so useful/accurate!”
So you are a bearded, IT branded t-shirt wearing, sandal wearing Unix Admin. Do you wear shorts or corduroy trousers?
Darren:
i thought real nerds wore socks even with sandals.
Your suntan stripes just disappoint me.
‘Seems the Romans were forced to wear socks on occasion…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/3181443.stm
Rob Read writes:
Alice was right; this is a nerds playground.
Hey, I can only call it as I see it, plus, it keeps some of us really bad ones off the streets 🙂
So you are a bearded, IT branded t-shirt wearing, sandal wearing Unix Admin.
No I used to be bearded, but not for very long. I looked like a Swedish fisherman, just off the boat. I’m also more of a Java/Perl developer these days, but I still get schlepped into DBA/Admin work, occasionally. Fortunately I have lots of automated scripts to do most of the work, for this, which gives me plenty of time to write articles about shoes.
Do you wear shorts or corduroy trousers
Today I’m wearing corduroy. At the weekend I wear shorts. So, right on both counts. Boomshanka! 🙂
Darren writes:
Have you got those freaky suntan stripes across your feet yet?
Yip. My bare feet looked like raspberry ripples, for a while.
name writes:
i thought real nerds wore socks even with sandals.
Yes, we do during the week. But even we’ve got to have a break, sometime. It fools other people into thinking we’re normal, which means they’ll invite us to real ale events.
Is this post another attempt to get Alice blogging again at Samizdata?
Alice wrote:
And frankly, I am not man enough to go up there and start talking about shoes.
Well now that Mr. Duncan’s taken the lead… strength in numbers and all that.
See, even your shoe articles are all nerdy and male!
You’re seriously telling me this place wants my best analysis of the latest Versace collection, followed by a few witticisms about modern dating habits?
Oh. No. You’re not…
One of things things I love about summer is putting on my sandals and letting my feet feel free all day.
(My work environment favors sandals.)
When it gets cool enough for socks it’s just not the same. Enough freedom leaves with socks that it’s not the same as without. So, back to ‘enclosed feet coverings’ until next summer.
Alice writes:
You’re seriously telling me this place wants my best analysis of the latest Versace collection, followed by a few witticisms about modern dating habits?
Alice, I would love to read an article from you about Versace, seriously. It would be a great break from all these science fiction/fantasy obsessed articles by strange men talking about Isaac Asimov, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Steven Pinker, and Tony Blair.
As a fashionless man, I also need improvement; at least I’m sure my wife thinks so. I need to know which sandals to wear, I need to know when and where sandals are acceptable, and I need to know about the modern world outside the news pages of the Daily Torygraph. Please help!!!
I’d also like to know about modern dating practices. It’s been a while since I’ve been out there but it’s always fun to find out about how these young ‘uns are doing it these days! 🙂
Go for it!!! I’ll even try to contribute. And I’ll try not to mention Harley Davidsons, Tony Blair, or even Gordon Brown. And I can’t say fairer than that! 😎
Stephen Hodgson writes:
Is this post another attempt to get Alice blogging again at Samizdata?
That’s the general idea. Plus I had this burning desire to tell the world about sandals, to help free those sandal-less ones from their hot leather prisons.
Ok, it’s not Solzhenitsyn, but this site is supposed to be about freedom, at least some of the time! 😉
I’m surprised nobody mentioned the 2 must-dos when it comes to wearing sandals:
1) the use of a sun-tan spray
2) a pedicure
“You’re seriously telling me this place wants my best analysis of the latest Versace collection, followed by a few witticisms about modern dating habits?”
Absolutely! I find women’s shoes oddly fascinating. Perhaps we could take this up off-line (waggles eyebrows)?
Plus, since most of us can’t get dates, our only exposure to the modern dating world is through our computer screens. Do let us know what is going on out there.