Doctor Marten Boots
August 29th, 2007 by 
Turn On As a child I proudly strutted in my first pair of “Docs”. I was a proud as punch in them. The very fact that they were :”Oil, Fat, Acid and Alkali resistant” was indeed a great thing for any shoe. That these perfectly buffed leather shoes had air filled soles and were resistant to all but nuclear attack gave them a huge status in my cupboard.
At the time Doctor Martens boots were a fashion statement in the playground, associating yourself with the SKA movement of Selector and the Specials. they also mad you feel ‘hard’, a rather addictive sensation for a 10 year old as I recall.
Now, in life one has many various types of footwear and it is not always possible to remember them all. A few pairs. though, have burned themselves onto the diary of my life so that they seem to represent eras with great fondness. I remember, for example, my first trainers which had ruber soles which kind of curved up at both the heel and toe; the feeling of potency they gave me whilst playing football was incredible : the ball went further, I turned on a sixpence and I could even dribble… I remember in direct contrast to my Doctor Marten air safety wear my sandals, purchased in a Spanish Market, afforded my feet little or no protection but the soft and pungent Spanish leather pleased me immensely.
My fascination with large and clunky boots continued for many years. I am rather embarassed to admit to wearing Timberland Safety Boots for a few years whilst at college. A rock climbing accident whilst wearing Caterpillar Safety Boots convinced me that safety shoes had a place, and that was on a construction site or place of potential hazard.
For the next few years I wore Spartan Sandals, purchased in the Athenian Flea Market at Monastiraki, sometime going barefoot through the dusty streets, my feet were able to breathe and sing, though they became blackened and calloused and indeed did not recover until my feet had spent a few days wandering ( and being beautfully buffed ) along the volcanic beaches of Perissa in Santorini. Soon my zorbaesque days had to come to an end and I returned to the shores of England. In this shark infested, heavily populated and severly congested area my foot protection became of utmost importance so I donned my online searching cap and located some flip horroshow kickboots online - some original, steel toecapped, oi, Doctor Martens Safety Boots
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Tom, with whom I have worked with for a few years has now gone his way, setting off for a trip round the world.
In an astonishing turn of events, sure to shake many well intentioned cyclists it has been proven that the use of a bicycle in populated areas actually increases carbon dioxide gas emissions as well as other pollutants on a macro scale. The average across town trip on a bicycle is estimated at 3 miles. Whereas the bicycle itself will discharge no CO2, and on such a trip an average car will contribute around 3 litres of CO2 to the atmosphere - a substance blamed for global warming and unrest in the Middle East. Now you may imagine that a bicycle is an environmentally friendly alternative, it certainly has always been offered as a way to reduce your carbon footprint. 
The new statistics recently unveiled by the Department of transport and the National Centre for the Environment have shown conclusively that a bicycle, though not itself contributing to greenhouse gases, causes such disruption to the flow of other traffic that it will account for double the average CO2 emissions of a car doing the same trip. A bicycle, using the road causes many vehicles to slow down, change gear, and accellerate, all having the effect of increasing their fuel consumption and subsequent emission of pollutants.
