My new fuorescent yellow running shoes

My new fluerescent yellow running shoes have been startling a few squirrels in the park, let me tell you. Pigeons have scattered in alarm. Old ladies have been seen clutching their frail husbands' arm a little tighter, eyes wide open in alarm. Toddlers have stopped mid-wail, snot and saliva still dripping from their beetroot-red faces, and stared in utter fascination.

I'm a little embarassed by all the attention, to say the least. As I came home from my first run in them this afternoon I was so flustered I assumed the presence of two fire engines and an ambulance in the middle of my square was somewhat connected with the shoes. It was quite a relief, in the circumstances, to be told about the ammonia leak at n28. 

You see, I'm not the sort of runner who delights in the feel of the wind in her hair, while she zips past the rest of humanity, her high-tech brightly coloured gear ablaze against the pale blur of the world. I'm the other kind, the fat and middle aged kind, forever re-building her strenght, breath and resistence after yet another epidode of back pain or knee trouble, hungover and lassitude pemitting. The weight I was hoping to lose I now just lug around, philosophically. I take the weight for a run as it were - and it enjoys it, mind - but it leaves me breathless, sore and half dead.The last thing I need is people, and small woodland creatures, pointing and staring.

My ideal running clothes would be black, sleek, spandexed and unassuming. The same goes for the shoes. The problem is, I am forever unwilling to spend money on sleek black running gear until I lose the weight, and the shoes, well, they do not come in black, ever.  Today in the shop my only choice (among the models that would accommodate my bulky orthotics insoles) were a pair featuring the colour and design of something Barbie might have vomited after an amphetamine overdose, and the flurescent pair I ended up buying.

Running shoes for non-clowning adults belong to the ever expanding category of goods for which, pace the rules of capitalism 101, a gap in the market persists despite the robust and often desperate demand:

Edible gluten-free bread;

Edible gluten-free anything;

Night clothes suitable for environments other than a Playboy shoot or a nursery;

Nice shoes of any kind with a bit of a heel in which it's actually possible to walk;

News analisys programmes on TV (not just made-for-radio discos made up of bloated right-wing journalists interviewing each other)....

I've run out of thoughts for now. What's on your list?