S
Despite most pensioners’ feet being protected by a lifetime’s hard-wearing calluses, the majority still choose to wear shoes, mainly for reasons of modesty, odour control or marking territory.
According to the website whoseshoes.com, the most common shoes worn by pensioners are:
Loafers. A loose fitting shoe made of soft white bread.
Brogues. A leather shoe with a distinctive Irish accent.
Sabatons. An armoured shoe filled with frothy custard.
Wagon-lock wedgies. An iron shoe with a tapered heel designed for improved stability on steep slopes.
On average, female pensioners own six times as many shoes as male pensioners, although when slippers are included in the figures, this ration is almost exactly reversed. The highest number of shoes ever recorded in the possession of one person was 28,364 pairs, which belonged to the 14th Countess of Shoesbury. The countess had a Palladian shoe folly built in the grounds of Espadrille Manor to house all of her footwear, which was bequeathed to Imelda Marcos when the countess died of a fungal heel infection in 1978.