These shoes are NOT made for walking

Now I know what you're thinking: that's one helluva good-looking walking shoe.

Wrong.

Well, yes, it is a good-looking shoe, I can't deny that. But no; this here is NOT a shoe made for walking! Get that hair-brained thought out of your shoe-addled heads once and for all, because this here is NOT a walking shoe. Don't even think about it.

N is for NO WALKING.

And should you mention RUNning and this shoe in the same breath I can't imagine I'll be able to speak to you ever again. There's only so much profound shoe confusion I can take.

Naturally when I tried the N-shoe on in the expensive sports' wear shop (Stirling Sports) that I'd finally decided to frequent to get me SOME DECENT WALKING SHOES for the first time in my life, the shop assistant did not ask if I was planning to do any walking in the shoes. She did not say indeed: 'these are not walking shoes, ma'am, these are for swimming'. She did not. Indeed she encouraged me to WALK around the shop and see how good they felt WALKING.

So you can imagine my total surprise and mild chagrin when I discovered that the soles of these shoes, covered in flat rubber pimples that look deceptively like the soles of football boots, encouraging the wild thought that even though you can't walk in them you might be able to play football, are not slip-resistant,  as one would expect of a sporty walking shoe, but in fact are positively slip-inclined, and if you're not careful, will take you for an unexpected, if brief, run.

I was not looking for a running shoe. No.

But never mind, because these shoes are not for walking, swimming or running, as it turns out. What these shoes are in fact specially designed for is "strolling".

I'd forgotten about strolling when I heard it uttered in Stirling Sports this weekend where I went in vain to complain that these walking shoes are no good for walking, I think ever since I parted company with my parasol. But it appears I was wrong to have forgotten there is a special type of non-walking forward movement of the feet for which a pair of expensive 'sports' shoes might be made and used. Indeed I'd been assuming for some time now that walking encompasses strolling AS A TYPE OF WALKING and so shoes that stroll could and should, at least in theory, also be up to walking.

More fool me.

Indeed you know what they say about assumptions..., at least I've got the perfect shoe for the fall.