The great trainer robbery

When I was still a little short of the tallest I grew to, I met a
girl called Julie and together we learnt to juggle. I remember that now
because the repetitive hand co- ordination is a skill I never mastered,
and Julie is a girl I've never forgotten although her last name now
eludes me.
THE CHALLENGE
"So when are we gonna leave?"
"When I'm good and ready, where are we going?"
"Out." Which meant we were going to play the tube game. John and I
would get on the circle line and wait for a few attractive girls to get
on, obviously going out for the night, and we would follow them to
whichever pub or club they were heading for, presuming that we could
gain entrance. Looking back it seems like a pretty desperate way to
spend your weekends and I find it hard to justify, except that we were
young, and once in an establishment we resolutely avoided our
unsuspecting guides using them merely as a means to chose a venue for
the night. John had 'been' since as long as I could remember and I
think if he were around now he would say the same about me. A hairy
man; we had found each other on a playground at infant school. It
always puzzles me that although I have a memory of our first meeting I
can associate none of my memories with a time before I knew him. Of all
the things we had done together the tube game was quite recent one. It
was John's idea originally, as something of an eccentric mind he was
prone to such obscure methods for simple tasks. It began like this: we
were travelling once and debating where to spend our evening, a
conversation that I presume most can associate with, an argument with
no sides; it was at the height of this decision making process that
John shouted embarrassingly loudly: "Fuck it I'm going wherever they
go.". I followed him as he followed them and from then on this was how
any unplanned evening would begin.
"Who was that you were dancing with yesterday?"
"Carol? Maybe?"
"Did you find her or the other way around?"
"I make all the moves!"
"How do you do it man, do you ever get refused?"
"All the time; you just gotta be ready for it, it's all about balls
dude!"
"Right, the next girl we see I'm talking to!"
"You reckon?"
"What are you saying? I'm not good enough?"
"Maaan, if I can do it you can, but you need practice, you need to warm
up."
"I've been trying that for years; that's my point, I just need to dive
in."
"Just cause you got the balls don't mean you wont belly flop, I'll set
you a challenge and if you achieve, you'll be ready."
-It is worth pointing out, before I recall what my challenge was, that
the time of this conversation was "drunk time". My mind has pieced its
words together over a long time, and a fair few renditions of my
story-
I can only recall having heard the proposal of "A Challenge" once
before, from the mouth of a French exchange student, at the time I was
proud to say I succeeded. And so it was, with this firmly in mind I
accepted all that John put forward. I'm sure it must have been a
particularly busy tube for the time of night else I wouldn't have made
it; we were stood by the door and John spied a dozing woman who had
kicked off her trainers. I think that his logic, apart from the chance
to laugh at me, was that by stealing her shoes I needed plenty of balls
and a willingness to get caught and have to explain myself. I haze over
for a little while as to the details of the operation but I have a few
photo-like images. The first is of the girl's legs as I crawled beside
them, and the next one of a smiling little boy who was short enough to
notice me. He looked like he had been on an outing with his parents,
the whole family were smartly dressed. I had made it to the doors as
they slid open and I leapt out, I think my crime was discovered as I
heard a commotion as I ran towards the turn-styles singing the
SexPistiols' "I am an anarchist" at the top of my voice [Footnote 1.].
I've never understood how thieves survive the strange adrenaline rush
of fear, excitement and triumph, although it does explain the
attraction of theft.
SIAN
I had run for what seemed like a long while and indeed I was quite a
way from the tube station I had departed from. I had run out of words
for the SexPistols and the song was becoming repetitive and so I slowed
to a walk, turned a corner, and slumped down behind a giant bin. My
head was too heavy for excitement, yet almost heavy enough for a
hangover. I sat, and perhaps I slept. I am still completely unaware of
what I did until I found out that it was 5am. In fact I must have
slept, and in my mind now it seems appropriate that I should be waking
and checking my watch as she arrived. I barely registered her approach
and I think she didn't fully appreciate my presence either else she
wouldn't have stopped. I imagine the picture perhaps more symmetrically
than it was; her entering from one end of the alley, me from the other
and us both arriving against the bin in the centre. If someone could
have walked past they would have seen me, weary, and clutching a pair
of ladies shoes sat next to a stunning woman in a torn and dirty bridal
gown also clutching a pair of shoes. I did later find out the exact
history of her night but the image conjured up by her appearance tells
the story much better than words and detail ever could. I read a bridal
magazine once and in words I associate with it; 'Her dress was fitted
and flowing, describing a slim and shapely body whilst providing the
modesty needed by a bride on her day of days'. Added to this were a few
appropriate mud stains and a tear stained face, all giving the
impression of a very rough night; none the less, in my mind her face
and gown shone. We sat there for some time, I was unconscious of
anything but the sounds of our breathing, and I debated a course of
action. Slowly I turned my head towards her, I hesitated, she looked up
and I smiled; or perhaps I grinned.
She cried.
Instinctively I reached for my handkerchief and handed it to her,
noticing as I did so that it was decorated with a loud Dennis the
Menace emblem.
She smiled.
We sat, and I examined the shoes I had.
We sat, and she examined the shoes she had. She sniffed, I looked over
and she passed me back my juvenile hanky.
We sat, and she examined the shoes I had.
We sat, and I examined the shoes she had: a white pair of strappy high
heels, one had a broken buckle and they had clearly been taken off to
provide more comfort during her travel. She sniffed, I looked over and
I cleared my throat:
-"Um, what size shoe are you?"
-"(sniff)size five" Both of our eyes followed the same path, my head
throbbed, perhaps it was the hangover or perhaps the realisation that
something huge depended on the trainers sat in front of me being size
five, or five and a half, life is rarely perfect.
HEX-ALIGHT
I worked in a sports shop for two months at a Christmas when I needed
the money more than my pride. On my induction the man in charge told me
two things which I latched on to: the first was never bullshit your
customers. The second was that you should always sell the most
expensive trainers to little children as, "only the most expensive
cushioning around can prevent the common affliction of shin-splinters "
[see footnote 2.]. It seemed that it was a little known fact that
before Nike Air one in three children were forced onto crutches after
running in the playground.
Heel down, immense stress on heel absorbed by hexagonal gel structure.
Toe down, interlocked cells transfer stress evenly across foot. As we
walked I don't remember her hands ever leaving her hair, whether it was
a reaction of despair and anguish at her recent actions or whether she
had meant to smoothly brush back her brown locks and had got distracted
I'll never know. On the walk I found myself linked firmly to Sian, by
her train. It was handed to me and I held too tightly to the folded
back of her dress as we kept instep following the river waiting for the
town to wake. There is no way of telling what will make two people open
up to each other, whether it is a spiritual link between their two
souls or merely a need to talk in that moment which they share. My
experiences with Sian both that night and later make me hope that the
first thought is the truer, but reason aside I was just glad of the
chance to talk. Strangely, with no real aim or guidance we had both
arrived at the South Bank, it seemed natural that we should head for
Waterloo. Sian had made it clear that she no longer had a place to
stay, and, although there was room at the flat I shared with John, I
had awoken that morning with a strange realisation that I had outgrown
my life there, I was ready to move on. We chatted less as we approached
the station; I think the realisation of our actions had dawned on us
both. A co-incidence, or an act of fate had drawn us together over the
night as kindred spirits, a situation which at the time felt too right
(and maybe too fragile) to dare split. We moved on through a darkened
arch which would lead us to where the station would be visible. Its
cobbled sides dashed with graffiti made the area seem much more
depraved than the new, light and clean plastering of the apartment
block we had just passed showed it to be. Inside, a dull green and
brown of sleeping bags lined the walls where the homeless had
congregated, not quite ready to rise to the reality of the day. As a
focal point half way through the tunnel (I'm sure now that it was long
enough to qualify) a woman, younger than her face portrayed, sat; a
lone head among the lying bodies. Her hands cupped out she made the
customary requests, and I'm not proud to say that we made the customary
shrugs. Not satisfied, I can still recall her slim figure rising, back
arched from the wall and her hands reaching out to Sian as she uttered
a curse; her words more ornate, and perhaps practised, than mine she
prophesised that Sian would never marry nor mother children. In
retrospect the curse was perhaps pre-ordained as Sian had already
missed her first opportunity to wed and I know that she never made it
all the way down the aisle. I had always sworn that I would not hold
any faith in the like of curses, but at the time (and maybe still), my
head and heart felt different. As I walked guiding Sian away I felt
heat and sensed a strong light from behind me. From that moment on, or
perhaps from the step onto the train, I always felt my life touched by
some stroke of fate or higher power, but as Sian has, and no doubt
still would say: "Five is a pretty common shoe size.".

FOOTNOTE 1: John recounted to me in hysterics later that the little
boy, so enthralled with my actions had tried to replicate them on his
father as he gallantly attempted to apprehend me. The ensuing scene
involved, apparently, a screaming mother convinced her husbands life
was endangered by the closing tube doors, a giggling little boy and a
spread-eagled father shouting at the boy about the evil role model TV
was providing him.
FOOTNOTE 2:Shin splinters apparently occur frequently to young children
with growing bones that cannot sustain the pressure a professional
career in hop-skotch provides. It involves these young bones almost
shattering and leaving splinters of bone fragment in the flesh and
muscle. It is my unsubstantiated accusation that their discovery can be
linked closely to the development of Nike Air