The Old Woman who Lived in a shoe

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe. At least that’s how she put it. She moved in, shoe and all, last week. To the park.

Of course, the press heard of it almost immediately, and it made the headlines. ‘DISPLACED PENSIONER TAKES ROOT IN PARK’ ran the arresting title. The editor was very pleased with himself.

When the public got hold of it arguments flared up immediately. A wave of people left their homes in the wake of the paper boy, and hurried to check the veracity of the report. Sure enough there she stood, in the park, wearing a once bright floral dress, a grubby old overcoat, and one large, muddy, leather boot.

Rapidly two opposing sides became clear, one in favor of putting the old lady into a care home, and the other protesting that she could make up her own mind, and seemed happy where she was.

Mrs. Phillips, a tall, sharp lady, who made a great show of regularly giving money to ‘worthy causes’, declared herself the leader of those in favor of taking the ‘poor old lady’ into care. She became a veritable zealot overnight, and her wingéd words won many.

The other group, who thought the old woman could do as she liked so long as she was happy, rallied behind Mr. Johnson, who also gathered a large following: You could get a lot of people behind Mr. Johnson (he was the butcher). His unflappable common sense seemed to elude Mrs. Phillips’ arguments.

Hostilities continued for several days. Banners were marched through the streets. Mrs. Phillips harangued Mr. Johnson in the market-place. Mr. Johnson was ‘all out’ when Mrs. Phillips went shopping. The town was scandalized, and spent many happy hours talking about it.

The old woman, of course, had no part in any of this. She carried on with her peculiar habits. Sometimes she sat on the bench, at others she stood in a large crowd of pigeons, feeding them something from one of her pockets. Some people said that they had even seen her on the slide, though these witnesses were generally younger than seven, and were not taken seriously. Still, it was true.

Eventually, the judge read his copy of the paper, which had been lying on the side in his living room. When he had also heard about the commotion it had caused, he decided that anything that could produce such ‘extreme’ behavior was worthy of note, and brought the matter court.

The next day, for the judge liked to be punctual and quick off the mark, the little provincial court was full, and the crowd spread into the street. The whole town was there (except for the old woman, who could not be found). Luckily the town was not built on a main road, else there could have been a major accident.

The Judge opened the proceedings with a formal address, and then invited Mrs. Phillips to speak.

She was dressed in a long coat with a fur collar, and a large hat, which was covered in feathers and fake fruit. It was her pride and joy.

In the front row sat a group of middle-aged, smartly dressed, attentive, 'nice' women, who formed her entourage. Do-gooders. (Insert spitting sound)

She stood up, and her little group burst into applause. Mrs. Phillips smiled graciously at them, then straightened her cue cards, coughed gently, and launched into a vivid description of a winters night, laced with similes that’d rip a writer’s ears off. Fortunately none were present. Wind raged, rain drove, and townsfolk huddled, whilst the group on the front row tugged at shawls, glanced upwards, and hugged each other respectively.

“How would you like it if you were stuck outside in that, rather than sitting in your nice, cozy, double-glazed houses?” she asked her audience.

“Who said she was stuck?” replied an unmoved Mr. Johnson. “Any of us’d take her in if she liked. ‘Cept she don’t like.”

Mrs. Phillips pretended not to hear. She continued with her speech, which was broad in subject, vocabulary and pitch. She talked about Britain’s aging population, and the absence of proper care for the elderly, the difficulty of making money for old people once their pensions ran out, and the shame of receiving money from the state. She talked about rising food prices, the cost of living, the loneliness of old age, and, studiously ignoring the “you’d know all about that” finished by imploring the crowd to “give this poor woman the basic necessities she so urgently needs”, and sat down, smiling.

After a brief interval, where everyone shouted at everyone else, Mr. Johnson stood up to speak.

“Mrs. Phillips,” he began. “May I ask you how you would like it if a committee got together, without your consent or prior knowledge, and decided to stop you from wearing that ridiculous bowl of fruit on your head?” the crowd laughed, except for the small elect group of followers. Mrs. Phillips looked stunned. A delicate hand went to her head and touched the said fruit-bowl. She turned red. She stuttered. Just when she looked like she would stand up and shout at him, Mr. Johnson began again.

“You’d be outraged, of course. You're an independent, conscious, free individual. If someone doesn’t like one of your decisions, that’s their problem.

“So, if Mrs. Phillips can do as she likes, then surely this woman can too. She can think, can’t she? And talk and feel emotions? She has free will. What is to stop her from doing what she wants?”

“The woman is deranged. Living in a shoe, indeed! She is not capable of making her own decisions.”

“And you are? Besides, what is so strange about living in shoes? We all are now, aren't we? I think it's a very interesting observation.

“Why do you think you should be able to decide what happens to another person’s life, or even whether they get one? How can it be your decision? This old lady is not harming anyone else, or causing them any trouble, so there is no reason for you to intervene. I say leave her alone. Offer what you will, but you can not make her do anything.”

The crowd shouted its approval, or rather some of it did. Feeling her grip slipping, Mrs. Phillips stood up and began to give a nice little pre-prepared speech in rebuttal to Mr. Johnson's points. No, I tell a lie. It may well have been a nice little speech, and certainly looked like one, but no one could hear it: a ruckus at the back was drowning her out. Mrs. Phillips stopped speaking and looked towards the noise in a beseeching and astonished primary-school-teachery way. “Boys!” she seemed to say. When she had continued to do this for several seconds to no effect she blinked, and carried on talking, louder. The noise from the back also got louder. She stopped again. The judge felt he was losing control, so he banged his gavel. Then he was distracted by the events at the back of the hall, and forgot to stop.

It looked as if someone was trying to get in. Only one of the two double doors was open, so all that could be seen of the assailant was the end of a wooden crutch, which they flailed around blindly. The people by the door were valiantly trying to keep the attacker out, but every so often the crutch would land a blow to a head, and someone would crumple. All at once, as if their instinct of self preservation made them act as one, the people by the door stepped back, and in rushed thirty or forty elderly people. Walking sticks were their weapons, wheelchairs their steeds, and, I hope, lots of good wholesome motives glowed in their hearts. The glint in their eyes told otherwise.

Displaying total disrespect for the I-leave-off-you-leave-off rule, they fell upon the innocent bystanders like a tribe of savages, to the accompaniment of suitably tribal whoops.

It was later discovered that these people inhabited the old folk’s home, and, in fact were paid for by the state. It seems that they had heard about the hearing today, and had asked to go and watch. On the way 'watching' became 'sorting things out', which had become 'bashing the lot of 'em' by the time they were halfway to the court. Their carers were found trussed up by the side of the road, and several broken windows traced their path from there. It was quite a long one, since all of them thought they knew the way, and none of them actually did.

Quickly the chaos spread to the rest of the room, and although the OAPs were hugely outnumbered, no one stopped to work out sides, and it was soon every man for himself. The judge was still banging away with his gavel. The noise stopped as an old man, grinning with the mad joy of war, snatched it from the dear judge, employed it on his head, and then the noise began again as he turned his attention to the desk, beating manically fast.

Everywhere was movement, everything writhed, pushed, pulled, swayed and struggled. Nothing was sure, nothing stayed still. Except, that is, for a small group of middle-aged women, who appeared unable to see anything around them, gazing, wide eyed and in shock at their adored leader, who was still struggling through her worthless speech.

The next day, after the courtroom had been cleaned up, and the old people had been detained in the town police department (from which they promptly escaped, by a window. They all set up alibis, and stuck to their story, and eventually got away with it: all old people look the same), the towns-people tried their best to forget about ‘the boot incident’, and, in time, succeeded. The old woman was never seen again, but the trail of someone wearing only one boot was found, leading half mile or so along the north road. The town, it seemed, had become too hot to hold her, the old woman who lived in a shoe.