Wrangling

When these boots arrived at the door in a box and I put them on and walked them up the stairs, my wife heard me coming. She stopped me on the way to my study at the top and pointed down. “What are these for?” she said.

She wasn't saying how good they looked.

“They're yard boots,” I explained. “They're not meant to look pretty. They're meant to work.”

“So when was the last time you did any actual work in boots of any kind?” she said sweetly. Fairly. Cruelly.

I got the boots to carry me to the shops, to push prams in to the park, to negotiate the sand down there, to take the pavements coming home, and to hold me up when I walk around teaching. That's work, isn't it? These past days by the lake, they've come into their own as uncompromising, waterproof walking boots. But the truth is I got them because I like boots, and I wanted these ones.

And I've been wondering down here why it is I like to sit (and to get up and pace around) and write in yard boots, and it came to me that I'm a wrangler. And what I wrangle is sentences. They come to me wild from the scrub. I rope a few at the edge of the trees and lead them to the yards.