A letter from a reader

At 62, I had started taking the long way round to avoid the wet leaves

I have never written to a shop before, and I did not expect my first letter to be about a pair of boots.

This is the bit nobody says out loud. Somewhere in the last few years I started planning my walks. Not the distance. The surface. I would come to the bit of pavement outside the chapel where the leaves go down and turn to mush, and I would cross over, or go round by the main road, or just decide I did not need to go at all. It is not that I had fallen. It is that I had started imagining it.

Nobody warns you that confidence goes before anything else does.

So I kept wearing the flat shoes with the worn-smooth soles, and I kept taking the long way round, and I told myself it was the scenic route.

Then I saw them on a friend at the market

Pauline marched across the wet cobbles at the market as though it had not occurred to her to worry, and I looked down, because I look at everybody's feet now. Soft taupe ankle boots with a great chunky sole on them. She told me they were the Xandressa, from Nottingham Boutique, a little boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. I ordered mine that evening.

What happened on the way to the market

I went the short way. Past the chapel, over the leaves, without thinking about it until I was already past. Three different women asked me about the boots once I got there, and my friend Sue told me I looked like I had made an effort, which I have decided to take as a compliment.

It is a small thing to get back. It did not feel like a small thing.

Three things I have learned since

One. It is the sole doing the work. There is a proper deep tread on the bottom and a low block heel underneath, and together they give you a steady step on a wet pavement. After two years in shoes worn smooth, that is the whole difference.

Two. The zip is why I actually wear them. There is one at the side and a little loop at the back, so they go on standing up, in seconds, with no laces and no sitting on the stairs.

Three. They are not clumpy to look at. I expected something apologetic and medical-looking. They are a soft suede-look taupe with a neat cream line round the sole, and they go with jeans, with my navy trousers and with the one midi skirt I own.

About the price

I had braced myself, because anything that promises to look after your feet usually charges you for the privilege.

The Xandressa is £39.95. It was £80.

There is no catch. They have their autumn sale on, delivery is free, and they do them from a UK 3 right up to a UK 8.5, in six colours.

I did go 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 sites, which if I am honest made me trust it more. One woman had written, "First autumn in years I have not been watching the pavement the whole way." That was the one that decided it for me.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you came round and we sat out on the porch with a cup of tea, this is what I would tell you.

If you have quietly started choosing your route, you are not being silly and you are not past it. You are wearing the wrong soles. That is a much cheaper problem than the one you think you have.

It does not look like it was made for somebody half my age, and it does not look like I have given up either.

Caroline