It’s the little differences that really get to you sometimes.
When we first got our boots, we ordered up some shoe polish from the grocery store, because we knew that we’d be wanting to keep them in good shape. Well, they’ve been out a few times now – to the Highlands, to Drumlanrig Castle, and most recently to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival – so we figured it was time to give them a thorough polishing.
Enter the “shoe polish.”
We’re used to Kiwi brand shoe polish. A tin of the stuff will last for years, literally, and is hard as a rock. It’s smooth, goes on kind of … well, kind of dry, actually. And then you rub at it, and it gets in all the nicks and cracks, and then you rub at it some more, really fast, and the shoes get all shiny. It’s the way shoe polish works! Not so, with Guardsman Gloss.
This stuff is sort of like colored, chunky Vaseline. D. went through nearly 1/4 of the pot, just polishing 4 boots! It goes on terribly slick, yet turns kind of a funny, sticky texture after it’s done. And you can’t really wait very long to remove it, because it gets so gummy as to grab hold of any little bit of lint and keep it, resulting in a linty boot! This just isn’t right.
Perhaps if we had only ever had this stuff we’d be OK with it … but when this pot runs out we’ll be buying some Kiwi polish, and only hoping that our boots survive until then! Kiwi Shoe Polish is now the only brand to show up at Tesco, which is, of course, simply the way they do business: only when you’ve stopped looking does your product show up. And when we run out of Guardsman Gloss? Then they will, no doubt, not carry anything else.
– D & T
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That sounds like the shoe polish that I bought. Granted, I got three for a pound at the Pound Stretcher, but still.
You can’t bet a tin of kiwi shoe polish and a bit of elbow grease!
When I was little, I used to wait impatiently for my dad’s shoe polish to be finished, so it could fill the tin with stones and play bebs with it, on the driveway.
That is how childhood used to be. You would be happy to make up loads of games with such everyday things. Throw in some chalk, string and elastic bands and you would have another 20 games!