A letter from a reader

At 62, my friend asked me why I had not been out with them since October

I have never written anything like this before, and I should say at the start that I am not a writer and I am not in the habit of telling other women what to do.

But three different women have asked me about my boots in the last fortnight, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to sit down and write it out properly.

It started in the spring, when one of the women I used to walk with rang me about something else entirely and then said, almost as an afterthought, the thing I have not been able to stop thinking about since.

You have not been out with us since October, Caroline.

I went and counted it on the calendar afterwards. She was right. Five months. And I could not have told you a single decision I had made about it. There was no morning where I sat down and gave up walking. It had just quietly stopped happening.

How it happens

Nobody decides to stop going out. It goes a morning at a time.

It is wet, and the path down to the gate has gone slick and dark, and you think, not today. Next week, when it has dried up a bit. And then next week it is wet again. And by the time it is properly dark at four o'clock you have stopped being asked, because everybody has quietly understood that you do not come in the winter.

And the worst part is that it feels sensible. That is what makes it so hard to argue with. You tell yourself you are being careful, and being careful is a good thing to be at our age, and so you never look at it again.

I know women who have not walked anywhere between November and March for years, and every one of them would tell you it was a sensible decision. I was one of them.

What I had wrong

Here is the bit I got wrong, and it took a friend saying something blunt for me to see it.

I thought the choice was between risking it and staying in. Between being brave and being sensible. And since I am not much interested in being brave at 62, I stayed in, and I called that the grown up decision.

What I had not once considered is that I had been going out in a pair of boots with no tread left on them at all. Not worn down. Gone. I turned them over on the kitchen floor and the sole was as smooth as the bottom of a mug.

So of course the path felt slippy. It was slippy, because I was walking on nothing. The problem was never that I had got to an age where the winter was too much for me. The problem was my boots, and I had never once thought to look.

Careful and stuck indoors were not a choice of one. I had just never checked the actual thing under my feet. That took me until 62 to work out.

Mine are the Tessa

They are from Nottingham Boutique, a small boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now, and they have their autumn sale on at the moment.

They are called the Tessa. Black, ankle height, laced up the front, and honestly they look a good deal smarter than anything I would have called a winter boot. Three things about them have mattered, and only one of them is the look.

The first is that sole. It is a proper chunky tread, deep enough that you can get a fingernail into the grooves, and it holds on to a wet path in a way I had genuinely forgotten footwear could. The first morning I went down to the gate I was still walking like somebody expecting to slip, and after about a week I noticed I had stopped.

The second is the lining. They are filled with a thick soft cream fur, right the way down and up over the tongue, so they are warm from the moment you put them on rather than after twenty minutes of walking.

The third is the one I did not know I needed. There is a zip on the inner side of each boot. So the laces stay tied, and you just zip them on and off at the door like a slipper. No sitting on the stairs unpicking a knot with cold hands. If you have ever stood in a hallway wrestling with a boot while somebody waits for you in the car, you will understand why I mention it.

The same doormat

I took these two myself, a few weeks apart, standing in the same spot by the back door.

I am not putting the old ones up to be dramatic about it. I am putting them up because for years I walked past them on that mat twice a day and never once saw anything wrong.

I have been out with the walking group four times since. My friend has not said anything about it, which I think is her being kind, and I have decided to let her.

Three things I have learned since

One. Turn your boots over. That is genuinely the whole thing. Not how they look, not how old they are, not what you paid. Turn them over and look at what is actually between you and the pavement, because I promise you have not checked either.

Two. The zip is the reason I wear them. I had not understood how much a small bit of faff decides what you do. When they were a struggle to get on, I found reasons not to go. Now they go on at the door in about four seconds, and so I go.

Three. It was never really about the walking. It was the shopping I stopped doing in person, and the coffee mornings, and the standing about outside after church. The walk was just the first thing to go, and everything else followed it quietly.

About the price

I want to be straightforward about this, because I did think twice.

The Tessa boots are £36.95. They were £74.00.

What settled it for me was working out what one bad wet fortnight costs in taxis to places I would have walked to. It was not far off the price of the boots, and at the end of it I still had nothing on my feet.

There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, without a shop on a high street to pay for, which is where the difference goes.

I did what I imagine you are doing now and went and read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars. Not the suspiciously perfect five you see on some websites, which if I am honest made me trust it rather more. Real women, mixed opinions, mostly very good.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sat in my kitchen with a pot of tea and you asked me, this is what I would say.

Go and get the boots you wear most and turn them over. Right now, before you forget. If the tread has gone smooth, then every careful decision you have made about not going out this winter was not about your age at all. It was about a worn out sole, and that is a much easier thing to fix than getting older.

Two practical things. The autumn sale is on now, and the clocks go back in seven weeks, which is when the mornings really change. And they only run from a UK 3 to a UK 7, so there is not a great deal of room at either end.

I lost five months to a pair of boots I never thought to turn over. I would rather you did not lose the same.

Caroline