It’s a children’s classic in the making, I just have to work out how to write it. Socks are making a reappearance as a welcome Christmas gift, if only on for fuel economy reasons. (Or maybe early onset circulation options. Take your pick.)
It’s interesting seeing the Saturday supplements reinventing present giving for tough times. Evidently you can give cheap gifts if you buy them in multiples. So buying lots of groovy socks for someone is acceptable, particularly because they are Useful. (Unlike many of the options available in Saturday supplements.)
I had thought it one of the unwritten rules of life that not only do the meek inherit the earth, a wife can inherit her husband’s socks. Oddly, this seems to work even if the husband’s feet are quite a lot larger than the wife’s. At any rate, it’s got me through several years of marriage and much foot pounding up and down the Royal Mile to work and back.
So it was a nice surprise for Dan to come home from the sales with socks for him and for her. After years of black socks that eventually turn grey, I have some jazzy ones with stripes. Dan has ones with matching heels and toes, in a range of colours, so you can do the conformist turn while shoes are on, while secretly aware that your socks are much more fun than anyone might suspect.
Sadly, there’s not a lot more I can write about socks without jokes about smelly feet. That didn’t stop Spike Milligan coming up with an idea for a sound effect of hitting the wall with a sock full of custard. He actually went to the BBC canteen to get custard to try it out, but evidently it didn’t sound as good in real life.
Shame. But maybe if you are still looking for a use for leftover stuffing, this could be just the thing…