Here’s what I learned from wearing Big, Wooden, Netherlandish Clogs for a whole day at Blog08.

  1. I decide to take three pairs of shoes to the conference, requiring a BIG bag. One pair of trainers for the street, one pair of wooden MooMoo clogs to wear at the conference and a pair of Splendid red normal clogs for just-in-case (more about those soon). I’m a true boy scout, prepared for any eventuality.
  2. That doesn’t stop me from being incredibly nervous. Not long after putting on my clogs, I feel like a right doofus. But I promised to wear them so on my feet they stay.
  3. I thought they’d be an ice-breaker. They are, with a minimal number of brave and curious folk. Mostly, they seem to repel the other 248 people at the conference more effectively than super strength Deet at work against mosquitoes.
  4. Edial and Ernst-Jan, the Blog08 organisers seem to think they’re funny and congratulate me on colour-coordinating my clogs with my clothes. Guys, it’s not hard to match black and white. What can I say?
  5. I go to get coffee from the bar at the conference. No one speaks to me. I try to approach some people, but the clogs have sapped my confidence. I bottle out when I see the up-and-down appraisals I’m getting, NOT in a good way. Ho hum. The stupid things I get myself into! Never again.
  6. In the conference, no one wants to sit next to me. I feel like the wallflower at a high school dance. Still the clogs do not come off. I’m getting stubborn about this now.
  7. Finally, a latecomer sits next to me and chats a bit. At tea time he disappears. Darnit. I’m too slow in my clogs to keep up with him. Perhaps he just moved extra-fast to get away from me.
  8. Then, during the tea break a guy wants to take photos of my clogs. I could have kissed him! At last, a fan. From then on, things get easier. I start making friends. It feels like the first day at a new school.
  9. It’s cold and rainy outside but I still want to get out and see the Amsterdam sky, so I take my clogs for a bit of a spin in the Great Outdoors. The clogs are too big to wear on the stairs, so I have to take them off and carry them down to the ground floor. I suppose I could have taken the disabled lift, but feel bad about that because, strictly speaking, I don’t have a disability; I am but a simple clog-wearer. So down the stairs in my socks I go. More strange looks. 
  10. Outside in the pouring rain, the clogs are warm and waterproof and loud. They make a hell of a racket on the paving stones. I take photos of my clogs as people cycle past in their wet-weather clothes, doing double-takes at my huge black-n-white feet. That makes me laugh.
  11. One chap asks to try on one of my clogs because he doesn’t believe me when I say they’re actually quite comfy. He doesn’t agree with my view, but then he isn’t wearing thick camping socks like me.
  12. Back in the conference I catch people staring at my feet. When I turn to look at them, they turn away rapidly. Okay, then. They’re only clogs, you know. They don’t bite!
  13. At lunch, I sit on the floor with a fellow conference-goer. The clogs make it difficult to get down to floor level and almost impossible to stand back up. Somehow, I manage.
  14. By 4pm I’ve decided to give up. I’m sick to death of people looking at me like I’m an escapee from the Amsterdam Asylum. I also need to go back downstairs and I want to do it in trainers this time. I figure 7 hours and 15 minutes is a respectable day to have spent in clogs. I need a break.
  15. The minute I’m in my trainers, people find me more approachable. They come up and ask where my clogs have gone. Isn’t it ironic? I should tell Alanis Morissette to add it to her song.
  16. At the after-conference party in a disused bunker in North Amsterdam, more people, no doubt somewhat lubricated by alcohol, come up to ask what happened to my clogs. I explain. They’re actually disappointed. There’s no way I’m putting them back on because the stairs in and out of this underground room are too deep for regular shoes, let alone clogs.
  17. When I finally make it back to the hotel, I put my clogs in a corner and look at them for ages. They’ll make great pot plant holders at home. It’s been a great day and I completed the challenge I’d set myself, but I would think very, very hard before wearing a pair of MooMoo clogs into a conference or any place so incredibly full of strangers. It was way harder than I’d thought it would be. Still, it’s another nutty tale for me to dine out on, I guess, so for that, it’s been well worth it.