This book is about an unusual journey: a unique journey through everyday surroundings. Rob Walters decided to become a shoeshine boy. He stowed his shoeshine kit, a tent, and a few items of clothing in a trailer, connected the trailer to his push bike and set off from Oxford to visit the old shoe-making cities of middle England. Along the way he polished many shoes, met lots of interesting people, pedalled many miles, and gained a fascinating insight into his own country from a rather unique perspective.Rejected by some, welcomed by many, he polished shoes in shopping centres, solicitor's offices, a kite festival, railway stations, campsites, street corners, and a bewildering selection of pubs. He polished the shoes of dossers, company directors, criminals, Morris dancers, publicans, bikers, policemen, schoolboys, reporters, a bowling green groundsman, an Icelander, and a Latvian - to name just a few. He slept in fields, in woods, and on the edge of golf courses. He was ejected from the Norfolk Show and welcomed into the offices of lawyers and fruit importers.During his journey he met members of the Household Cavalry, topless protestors, a homeless joss stick seller, a man who stole baths in hotels, a submariner, a beaten housewife, a disenchanted solicitor, a rubber recycler, a toyshop owner, and two ghost guides - amongst others. All of them had a story to tell: some sad, some amusing. It is their tales and Rob's own incisive observations that are related in this unusual book. Reading it will transport you to Northampton, the centre of the English shoe making tradition; then through the Fens to East Anglia; back across the country to the Midlands; down along the River Severn to Gloucester; and then over the Cotswolds to Oxford. Progress is at a comfortable cycling pace along the country roads and through the sleepy villages, yet interrupted regularly by diversions into the vibrancy of the cities.
About the Author: I am a Gloucestershire boy, born in Berkeley a good many years ago. I grew up in the shadow of the village's ancient castle where we fished, walked, stole apples, smoked cheap cigarettes and lived a life of great freedom ranging around countryside where motor cars were still sufficiently rare for us to collect their numbers. A practical and headstrong teenager, I left school at the age of 16 years to begin an apprenticeship as a telephone engineer: despite the well-meaning advice of my father and his offer of one pound per week in pocket money, I opted for five pounds a week and a 'man's' life. I enjoyed being an apprentice but it was not stretching - perhaps I should have taken pop's pound. I took day release in order to study and also studied at night. I read voraciously - mostly science fiction - and wrote occasionally. By the age of 20 I was married with a child and in the next year arrived at the University of Essex to take a master's degree in telecommunications. A big change and an introduction to a wider world of thought, a world that I had missed out on by not becoming an undergraduate. On the fun side (also a little bit serious) I realised at this time how bad beer was becoming. I attended the first meeting of CAMRA with a dear old friend, Mike Bennett and together we started the Suffolk branch of the Campaign for Real Ale back in 1974. I became an Essex man, then a Suffolk gentleman (sic), a father of four, the owner of a five acre smallholding and ultimately a high-level manager in British Telecom and a keeper of goats. Around about 1990 BT and I parted company - I started to work for myself. I formed a company and became an author, consultant and educator in some obscure but lucrative areas of telecoms . Telecoms imploded at almost the exact same time that I became disenchanted with it. I had already moved to the beautiful city of Oxford and began to satsify two ambitions: to become an author of non-technical books and an Oxford tour guide. And that's what I now am. My main base is still Oxford, but I also live in Stow-on-the-Wold (my wife's birthplace) and in La Fresneda, Spain which holds many memories of my eldest daughter - now dead. I also travel in a way that I never could when I had a 'proper job'. In those days I saw the world mostly through the windows of aeroplanes, hotels and offices. Now I venture into that world, travelling slow and staying long.