Of course you have, these are Birkenstock Arizona sandals – not quite as ubiquitous as the Croc but much nicer to look at. The reason I am posting this picture is because I twice owned a pair of these. Both times they were bought second hand (for some reason this has provoked a yuck feeling from one or two people I have related the tale to). The first pair lasted me at least 10 years. They had been with me through various family holidays and even the odd Glastonbury festival. They eventually wore out but I was fortunate enough to find a near identical replacement pair. It was not so such a long relationship with the second pair, however, and they didn’t even see me through a single summer. You could now be thinking that this is going to be a lament on how they don’t make things like they used to. I am certainly of an age where one might expect me to express such a sentiment and I do think it is largely true, but not in this case. No, good reader, I am disappointed to inform you that I was relieved of my new(ish) Birkenstock Arizona sandals at a campsite swimming pool near Nantes in France. Yes, that’s right, someone bloody well stole my shoes – or rather swapped them for a pair of Lidl lookalikes four sizes larger. The only mild satisfaction I can glean from the incident is the thought of them hobbling away, very uncomfortably, in their newly upgraded sandal splendour.
This is not my first encounter with french footwear filchery. Many years ago, on a family holiday in the Loire Valley, someone took a shine to my newly acquired deck shoes. To be fair I didn’t actually like them very much but they were very practical and very new and very much the only footwear I had with me that day. The M.O. was the same as Birkenstockgate, unsuspecting English traveller dutifully obeys the rules at the french campsite and promptly gets their Nikes nicked for their trouble. I should have known better this time around but no one expects lightening to strike twice nearly 200km away and 30 years later!! What, I wonder, are the odds on that??
Why, you may be curious to know, am I telling you all this? Well, the first and most obvious reason is a warning to be on your guard when depositing your footwear at the designated and clearly marked shoe-leaving-area at a french campsite swimming pool – don’t do it, keep your shoes with you (or wear Crocs). The second is more serious. I visit campsites a lot and have done for many years. I have written a number of times about my experiences on site and also more deeply on what I believe goes towards making them so unique and special. One of the best things about camping is the sense of community that it generates for those there. You smile and greet people, you chat whilst you are doing the washing up, you look out for the safety and wellbeing of children and pets, you lend people stuff knowing full well you won’t get it back. Something you do not do is steal from your fellow campers. It would be so easy, there are many opportunities – half the people on site are only in a tent – but people don’t as it would be such a breach of trust. This is why having my sandals purloined hurt so much and made me feel cheated and vulnerable in a way that it wouldn’t have had it happened in any other area of my life. It was wrong on just about every level and I’m still annoyed about it.
So, have you seen these sandals? If so, could you ask the person wearing them if they were on a campsite in Nantes in June this year? If you happen to be the person that stole them, well, shame on you but if you put them back where you took them from, I will pick them up when I am passing through Nantes next and will say no more about it.