A Load of Cobblers

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

20 October 2009

Partner takes in two pairs of boots to local shoe repairer. She pays him £10. Shoe repairer says boots will be ready on 27 October.
27 October 2009

Partner visits shoe repairer to collect boots. SR is apologetic, and says he hasn’t had time to mend boots, but they will be ready later that day, and will be delivered to our home that very same evening by his driver. Partner gives him our address.

Boots fail to arrive.
3 November 2009

I visit SR to enquire about non-delivery of boots, and to establish their current whereabouts. SR states that driver has mental difficulties, and couldn’t find address to deliver boots. SR also says that driver has a phobia about number 9, and that he refuses to deliver any items to any address with the number 9 in it - 9, 99, 999 etc. (we don’t live at number 9, 99, or 999.)

I respond with query about what happens when driver is sent to a house where digits add up to 9, such as 54, or where digits multiply to 9, such as 33. SR says that he himself lives at number 54 Somewhereorother, and when driver arrives to pick him up in the morning he has to wait at the gate, otherwise driver will knock on door of number 56 instead.

This explanation given totally on the fly impresses me no end. I nod sagely, comment on the difficulty of obtaining staff without numerical phobias of one kind or another, and ask where boots are currently to be found.

SR says boots are on the van, which is about 15 miles away as we speak, and that he will deliver them personally to our home that very same evening.

Boots fail to arrive.
10 November 2009
Partner and I visit SR to enquire about non-delivery of boots, and to establish their current availability.

SR states that his partner is having problems with pregnancy, and that he was with her in hospital 25 miles away, causing him to forget about boots. We offer sympathies, and ask where boots are to be found at this moment in time.

SR states that boots are on the premises, but in a store-room attached to the back of the shop. He further comments that he cannot get the boots right now because workmen are performing key modifications to the store-room, rendering boots inaccessible until at least 17:00 hours (GMT). He promises delivery of boots to our address at 17:15 that very same evening.

Boots fail to arrive.
.
.
.
I can’t be too critical of the shoe repairer. There are, after all, four key elements involved in successful shoe-repairing. These are (1) taking in the boots for repair (2) accepting the payment (3) repairing the boots and (4) returning the boots to the owner. He has a strong handle on items (1) and (2), of that there can be no doubt. In fact, he excels in those departments. With item (3) the jury is still out. Only item (4) is a function he definitely needs to brush up on. Therefore he has mastered at least 50% of the required elements of shoe-repairing, with only the other 50% remaining a work-in-progress.

Our plan is to visit the shoe repairer every week from now until approximately the end of eternity, in order to add to our growing collection of excuses for the non-delivery of the boots, and to publish an anthology of them at some time in the future, possibly ready for Christmas 2020.

2

Apparently Nelson Mandela visited his cobbler the day after his release from Ellis Island to collect the shoes he’d put in for repair before his detention.

The cobbler told him they’d be ready Tuesday!

3

Never shoulda given the elves new clothes.

4

I keep imagining John Cleese in the Chez Guevara role and Michael Palin as the shoe repair guy.

5

I commend the OP for his good humour in putting up with this. I suspect after the third excuse I would have purchased a new pair of boots, gone back to the cobbler and given him a good kicking with them. You know, just to break them in a bit.

6

" …otherwise driver will knock on door of number 56 instead."

That… was inspired.

Gawk
Cobblers.

7

Were you thinking…

“Lovely boots, beautiful plumage.”

or

“Any Venezuelan beaver boots?”

8

Is the cobbler close enough that you can go by the shop every day? If not can you call him every day to make a point that the annoyance of dealing with you as a customer is not worth the extra value he gets from rubbing your boots all over his body or whatever he is doing with them?

9

He wreaked them and is afraid to tell you or his pregnant wife is wearing them and he’s afraid to get them back with her current temperament.

10

I just watched Seinfeld last night wherein Kramer took all of Jerry’s sneakers to a shoe repair shop to help keep the place in business - repair shop went out of business anyway - Jerry’s sneakers showed up at a garage sale in Parsnippany, NJ…If they were expensive designer boots, I would look for them on eBay.

11

Chez Guevara, you’re very generous in your estimation of the 4 parts of successful cobbling. One would expect that the actual repair would carry a bit more weight than the other three. Of course, the fact that you may never be able to assess that capability makes it moot.

12

You paid before the boots were ready? I don’t normally pay for shoe repair (or drycleaning) until I get the shoes (or clothes) back.

13

There are a couple of things to bear in mind here.

Firstly, I’m pretty sure the cobbler doesn’t have a driver. It’s a small business, and hiring a driver to deliver footwear to all and sundry doesn’t seem like a practical proposition to me. (Especially a driver who dislikes the number 9.) In any case, a shoe repairing business normally employs a system whereby people drop of their shoes (or boots), pay the cobbler, and pick them up after a few days. A cobbler with a delivery driver is beyond my sphere of experience.

Secondly, it’s unlikely the cobbler has a store-room. Even if he does, it would be unwise to keep shoes in it because customers are wont to come in his shop and ask for them back, as promised. Also, if workmen are reconstructing a store-room, items contained therein may suffer damage from sledgehammers, and things like that.

The cobbler is of East European origin. I suspect that he has lost the boots, or mistakenly given them to somebody else, and his culture does not permit him to lose face by telling us this. He is probably trying to get them back, as we speak. Of course, it could be that his pregnant partner liked the boots, so he gave them to her as an early Christmas present.

Weekly visits are fine by us. Furthermore, as the excuses are so imaginative, we have become more interested in them than we are in the boots.

I can’t wait for next week. If the boots are there, I personally will be somewhat disappointed.

14

That’s exactly right, but it’s the not knowing that makes it more exciting.

It’s de rigeur around here to pay for stuff in advance now. I imagine people have been ditching old boots at cobblers instead of recycling them, or something.

There’s something I forgot. As an apology for yesterday’s abortive visit to the shop, the guy gave us a ticket for a free heel repair anytime we want one. I had the choice of telling him that we didn’t wish to add to his current collection of our boots, and that we would be avoiding his services (such as they are) like the plague from now on, or telling him that we were overjoyed at his generosity and couldn’t thank him enough.

Naturally, I chose the second option.

16

Okay, I think I might be seeing a hole in your cobbler’s explanations. His nonaphobic partner was pregnant? But a full-term pregnancy is nine months plus nine days!

I hate to be the one to break this to you, but your cobbler might be embellishing the truth somewhat.

17

You have to say “dog kennels” to the driver, or else he puts a bag over his head. Then you all have to stand in the tea chest and sing “Jerusalem”.

18

Oops, looks like I had conflated the cobbler’s driver with his partner. Nevermind – the explanations sound perfectly reasonable now.

19

I expect that given enough time this cobbler’s shop could grow to be quite the conglomerate.

“Oh, sorry, my accountant with Tourette’s accidentally shipped them to the Jakarta branch. They’ll be back this afternoon.”

20

I think you should visit as often as you can. Maybe you can get that book ready for publishing by this Christmas, or at the very least next. Can you imagine, septupuling your output with daily visits?!

21

I know how this will end: with Chez Guevara getting one boot back at a point some years removed from now. It’s like the old rhyme, you know: “Cobbler, cobbler, mend my shoe, have it done by September 5, 2013.”