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