Polishing My Shoes

I am giving a talk tonight. As usual, I'm busy avoiding preparing for it. It is a rare day now-a-days that I put on a shirt and smart trousers but as I'm meeting folks I've never met before in a city I've never been to, I thought I'd better make an effort.

While polishing my shoes this morning it occurred to me that this was probably one of the few things that I do that my father and grandfather would have done in a similar way. Sure, you can get those cream things that paint your shoes black but you cannot beat a good old fashioned bit of spit, brush and polish to make them look nice.

My job is based over the internet (which was largely developed in my lifetime). The food I eat is very different to what my own parents eat and has far too many herbs and bits of "foreign muck" for my grandparents to have considered eating. Most of the clothes I wear are made out of materials recently invented and non of them are made in the country I live. I just drove over a hundred miles in a morning without thinking about it and I am now writing this blog post over wireless internet access from my laptop in my hotel room (that I booked and found directions to using the internet)

Polishing my shoes makes me smile as it is about the only thing I do that my father and grandfather would recognise about my life and it feels good to be doing something the proper old fashioned way.