Last Thursday, for the first time in my life, I had my shoes shined. I sat on a stool outside St Mary-le-Bow on Cheapside and a man crouched at my feet and got busy with the Kiwi polish, rags and brushes.
It had never occurred to me to do such a thing before. This is partly because I don’t notice scuffed shoes until they are shamefully tatty, when I generally turn to and polish them myself. More than that, there is something disagreeable about the idea of someone prostrating themselves at your feet.
When I worked on Wall Street in the early 1980s, I remember seeing lines of men in suits sitting on high chairs loftily reading the Wall Street Journal while men in dirty aprons toiled away below them. My liberal north London soul winced at the sight.