An Irishman's Diary

SEARCHING the archive for something else a while ago, I chanced upon an intriguing item in the Irishman's Diary of February 18th, 1943, about what the writer claimed was a growing fashion in Ireland for "clogs and wooden-soled sandals".

The trend was credited to a Yorkshireman called Kenyon, who had spotted a growth market here. As the diarist explained: "Mill girls in Leeds and Bradford, before the pre-war silk stocking era, always wore clogs and shawls, clattering like an army into the mill. Mr Kenyon. . . manufactured these clogs; but as the girls acquired more aristocratic tastes, his business suffered.

"Then he visited Ireland and was struck by the possibility of a market in rural districts. . . He discovered, too, that he could get supplies of very suitable wood from the Irish trees; so he stayed in Ireland and built up a thriving business."

I thought of that Mr Kenyon again yesterday when I saw the reports about another overseas shoe manufacturer who has spotted an opening here. Circumstances are rather different this time. Indeed, reading the description of Manolo Blahnik's new Dublin store - "the idea was to create the sense of a Georgian living room. . . against which to display the shoes like sculptures" - one couldn't help feeling a surge of pride at how far our little country had come in 65 years.

I don't mind saying I had to fight back tears thinking of the blighted lives so many of our women led during those dark decades past, when even the mill girls of Yorkshire had more aristocratic tastes. At least they can make up for it now, I thought.

But then I started worrying. Confident as he seems, it struck me that Mr Blahnik had not timed his entry into the Irish market quite as well as his canny predecessor. With the crash of 2008 in spate and a hair-shirt budget only days way, was this really the moment to be launching shoes that look like works of art, and have similar price tags? I take the man's point (although I'm not sure I understand it) when, explaining women's passion for his creations, he says that "lately the extremities are important and people are almost being forced to look down".

By this logic, economic depression may be good news for the footwear industry. Conversely, it looks bad for hats. And yet the bottom line, surely, is there will be fewer people able to buy luxury fashions of any kind this Christmas than last.

At worst, one fears that the opening of a Blahnik store now will cause an upsurge in violent shoe crime, along the lines of the harrowing Sex in the City episode in which Carrie Bradshaw is mugged for her Manolos. At best, it will just seem like another cruel joke on the long-suffering women of Ireland.

I don't blame the designer for the bad timing. But maybe he should make some sort of gesture to the downturn. If you're reading this, Manolo, would it be too late to add a wooden range to the winter collection?

NO SOONER had I read the Blahnik story yesterday than, in a coincidence that can only be described as grim, I received a press release about the 2008 Clones Film Festival.

The centrepiece of this year's event (www.clonesfilmfestival.com) will be the world premiere on October 24th of The Last Confession of Alexander Pearce, which is based on the terrible true story of a convict transported to Van Dieman's Land in 1819 for stealing "six pairs of shoes".

In The Fatal Shore, Robert Hughes's epic book about the founding of Australia, Pearce is described as "a little pock-marked blue-eyed Irishman from Co Monaghan". Most accounts, in fact, suggest he was born just across the border from Clones, in Fermanagh. I say this in the spirit of historical accuracy - and not to support the claims sometimes made by my fellow county men, typically during heated moments at GAA matches, that Fermanagh people eat their young.

In any case, Pearce was a prisoner at Macquarie Harbour, the notorious penal station in Western Tasmania; and according to Hughes, he is the only man to have escaped from it "twice". On the first occasion, he fled with seven other convicts, their plan being to head east to the Derwent river, travel downstream towards Hobart, and sail for home.

Unfortunately, unknown to them, this meant crossing some of Australia's most hostile and inaccessible terrain. Only Pearce survived the subsequent nightmare, drawing on skills none of which was as important as the ability to stay awake longer than his comrades.

I don't want to give the plot away here. But when he eventually made it back to farming country, where he managed "to grab and dismember a lamb" and eat it raw, it was closer to conventional dining than he had had been used to of late.

Pearce avoided hanging after the first escape partly because nobody believed his story, preferring to think he was using his depraved criminal imagination to cover for comrades still at large.

He was sent back to Macquarie, a celebrity. Later, a newly arrived convict called Cox, in thrall to the legend, persuaded him to join a new escape. It was only when they found (some of) Cox later that the authorities finally took Pearce at his word.

As I said, I don't want to give the plot away entirely. Suffice to add that, in the annals of shoe-related crime, it puts Carrie Bradshaw's trauma in some much-needed perspective.