I had already posted my memories of my grandfather repairing my shoes as a child, but it seems that we cannot access our earlier posts beyond a given date. I have no doubt that "The Team" have a more than good enough reason for this.
I will repost it here, and if this is against the rules they have my full permission to remove it.
The following memory is one I have recorded elsewhere. It is the first one that comes to mind when I think of my grandfather. How he would have loved this technological age. Sadly he died in the seventies and he never even saw a PC. I have rewritten parts of this reminiscence and edited it for inclusion here. I have no doubt that many of you will have similar memories.
When I was a young child I watched my grandfather many evening sat at a cobblers last in the kitchen repairing the family shoes. He would select a piece of leather roughly cut it size then cover one side with a glue and then place it on the shoe. Once placed on the last he would then tack it in place with little brass tacks. He sometimes would arrange them in little patterns and swirls when he knew I was watching. Any tack that managed to pierce through the leather would be flattened on the last. A technological marvel of the age.
He would then take a sharp knife and then with the shoe in one hand and the knife in the other he would trim off all the excess leather around the shoe. Then he would use a large rasp to smooth round the rough edges and finally a file would finish of the job. Then he would take large brown or black crayon type of thing dependant on the colour of the shoe and heat it over the gas ring and rub it around the rim of the sole so it took on the same colour as the shoe and ensured the sole was sealed. He would follow the same process with the heels, only he would build them up to the required height in layers. The final part of the operation was to affix steel tips to the areas liable to most wear.
If they were my shoes he would then throw them to me saying there you are Tojo (his name for me) they should last you at least another six months.
Do you know just reading this thread brought all that back to me as if it was yesterday and it was over 55 years ago.
When we are children, we think our parents and grandparents are gods, when we get a little older into our teens we begin to see them in a different light and maybe not so kindly, but I am glad to say that as we begin to age ourselves we once again remember them again as if we were children.
Phil