I was quite surprised to haul these out of the cupboard on Friday morning, in the midst of my desperate scrabbling around to try and find some half decent looking clothes which would fit the bill for the upcoming afternoon Touchwork lunch function.

The dress code was smart casual, which should normally not be a problem for a man in his early 30’s, but which actually does happen to be a problem for Craig, who has long since become far too big for the paltry collection of work shirts who sullenly inhabit a dark corner of his little clothes cupboard, never mind the forlorn chinos sitting on the side of the aforementioned space.

All of which means that thank goodness I do actually own a pair of jeans that currently fit me, and for now, if I close my eyes I can imagine a collared golf t-shirt as being sort of ‘smart’. And seeing as underwear and socks go hidden, it really was only the shoes that were bothering me, considering the fact that my de facto shoes that I have access to at the moment happen to be a pair of white running shoes or my old smelly slippers, i.e. not exactly smart casual stuff.

So you can well imagine my sigh of relief and glimmer of joy when I made this discovery in the bottom of my clothing space, and then of course the grin when I had to promptly use my socks to take off a layer of dust a good few millimeters thick just to tell what colour they are!

Heavy, smart black Bronx shoes.

Who would have known? Certainly not Chantelle as she laughed when I excitedly showed them off to her, and then who promptly laughed again when I snapped some photos for the blog.

I thought they came out quite nicely actually…