Over at The Nature of Robertson, Denis Wilson - a good friend of this blog -
is having a vent about footwear in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales.
Denis Wilson of The Nature of Robertson
Now there are a few things you should know:
- Denis lives in a lovely village called Robertson in the Southern Highlands.
- Denis is a keen environmentalist/naturalist. He is this blog's expert in residence and general go-to person in relation to birds and plants and a range of other matters.
- The Southern Highlands - certainly for more than a century - has been the place where Sydney folks with a bob or two like to establish country estates which they visit at week-ends.
Denis's venting post is interesting on a couple of levels.
- He makes plain what the true country person wears in the way of footwear and why.
- He makes plain the necessity of wearing a particular type of footwear.
- His vent takes on a sociological bent as he contrasts his footwear with the footwear of other men and women present at the hostelry to which he had resorted.
- He contrasts the footwear of the leisured weekenders still dressed in Sydney kit with his own - the footwear of those who tread the land to better understand their environment and the other species with which they live.
I hope the result of Denis's vent is that the leisured weekenders will have a think about the where and the why of their footwear.
- Do they choose to look like locals or like leisured weekenders?
- Do they choose to look like people seeking to understand their environment or just transplants demonstrating their class and their origins?
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Glad you have taken my comments seriously.
ReplyDeleteSome friends have accused me of "inverted snobbery". And there is some truth in that.
But I have lived in the Southern Highlands for 10 years and feel perfectly comfortable amongst the "locals" - but spare me from these mobs of "city slickers".
Denis