In the podiatrist’s office, getting an ingrown toenail removed, I conjured happy, distracting thoughts. My left big toe had been bothering me for a while. It was swollen and red, sore to the touch. Orla, the foot wizard, used a variety of implements to delicately remove fragments of nail which she informed me had been growing in not one but two different wrong directions.
I’m a foot person, an absolute hoor for the reflexology and the foot massages, so this procedure was not as traumatic as it sounds. There was pain, but also delicious satisfaction from all the poking and prodding, and relief that something erroneous was being removed.
Afterwards, Orla warned there was a risk the nail could grow back in the two wrong directions. One way to avoid this was not to put pressure on the area. “Be careful with the shoes you wear,” she said. For ease of shoe removal, I had worn my sparkly silver flip-flops, purchased in Lahinch a couple of summers ago, to the appointment. I resolved that I would wear flip-flops for the next couple of weeks to give my nail the best chance of growing back straight.
It wasn’t exactly the weather for flip-flops. As I walked down Wicklow Street in the lashings of rain, wearing my voluminous raincoat and sparkly flip-flops I had this sudden memory of my late Uncle Christy. There were many remarkable things about Christy Ingle but I’ll mention just two: His teeth, which until they were replaced by dentures, stuck out from his mouth at a surprising angle. “I could eat an apple through a letterbox,” as he’d say himself, so I don’t think he’d take offence at my pointing out his interesting teeth situation. The other thing about Christy was his preference for flip-flops over shoes. He wore them all year round.
The weather outside is frightful but I’m wearing flip-flops. It’s in the blood
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I would channel Christy, I decided, I would walk a while in his flimsy shoes. So I wore my flip-flops to the fancy grocery shop where I bumped into a friend at the sourdough slicing machine, explaining my flip-flop story before she even noticed them. I was, I realised, getting my flip-flop defence in first. I wore my flip-flops to work. I wore my flip-flops to the cancer day ward in the Mater hospital to get my injections where a nurse told me about an Australian man she met in Antarctica who wore shorts and flip-flops for the entire trip.
I wore my flip-flops to give a talk about journalism to some transition year students. I wore my flip-flops to Rathsallagh House in Co Wicklow, where a friend was treating me to a night away.
I’m wearing flip-flops as I write this, frankly. What I’ve learned is that most people are too polite to ask why I’m wearing flip-flops in the winter, although I have had some funny looks.
Christy never minded the funny looks. I rang his daughter Sandra, my cousin, to find out more about her dad’s choice of footwear. Sandra said he always felt too constrained by socks and regular shoes. “He said it was like wearing knickers that were too tight,” she explained.
Christy’s wife Betty, who had been dealing with dementia for years, died in March 2022. Christy was heartbroken. They’d been married for 65 years
Speaking of underwear, another of Christy’s peccadillos was that he would only wear white boxer shorts, he couldn’t bear coloured undergarments. As a newly-wed back in 1950s Dublin, his wife Betty couldn’t find any white boxers in the shops so presented him with coloured ones. Christy went back to his ma, my grandmother, and got her to boil the boxers until the colour was gone out of them.
Eventually, Christy, a vet turned taxi driver, graduated from flip-flops to Birkenstocks. They offered more comfort but still allowed him the foot freedom of a flip-flop. I should point out that excessive flip-flop or sandal wearing comes with serious health warnings: balance issues, strained tendons, plantar fasciitis, foot swelling and foot fungus. None of that put Christy off. He went for regular pedicures to keep his toes looking pretty and despite the decades of minimal arch support his feet were in great nick.
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He was a regular at the chiropodist, who told Christy, as everybody did, that he had the loveliest feet. He even wore Birkenstocks and a suit to his granddaughter Lygia’s wedding. She didn’t mind one bit.
Christy’s wife Betty, who had been dealing with dementia for years, died in March 2022. Christy was heartbroken. They’d been married for 65 years. Betty and Christy were part of the 11’O Clockers, a group that would congregate for daily swims in Sandycove until the pandemic came and parking became an issue. Betty couldn’t read or write, so Christy did all her paperwork and life admin.
When she died Christy told people Betty was up there in heaven, not able to sign anything without him. “She’s calling to me,” he told Sandra. “She is not. She’s grand and happy up there,” Sandra said. In the end, Christy caught Covid at Betty’s funeral and died, aged 92, a few weeks later. He was buried, according to his wishes, in a suit and his Birkenstocks.
The weather outside is frightful but I’m wearing flip-flops and browsing for Birks and thinking fondly of my Uncle Christy. Displaying bare toes in inclement weather, not to mention in the workplace, might well be taboo. But I’m my uncle’s niece. It’s in my blood. And much like him, I don’t give a flip.
