Friday 3 February 2012

Wellies for the Red Dirt Girl

Red Dirt Girl goes all googly eyed over  footwearhttp://throughthegate09.blogspot.com/2012/02/frivolous-friday.html. This week's exciting footwear is on her blog.... Shiny red welly-boots. Very shiny. Too shiny to wear in the steamy southern rain.


 Welsh-Walesian blogger/potter/gardener gz comments "I'd go for yellow ones!!  ("Where would you be?" The Big Yin !!)"

 And it occurred to me that the Red Dirt Girl and most of the non-brits reading would not know what the reference is about.
.  All-round larger than life scots comedian, Billy Connolly, a lovely man, had a song, about wellies. (also known as rubber boots, wellingtons, topboots, billy-boots, gumboots, gummies, barnboots, wellieboots, muckboots, sheepboots, poopkickers, or rainboots) I thought I'd post it here.
But before that, I thought I should come clean, and confess I recently bought a pair of uber-wellies myself. My job often requires me to trudge through mud water, and filth, and no matter what the advertising says, I've yet to find a leather waterproofer that works for long. So I end up with cold wet feet. I had some wonderful wellies, they were made by Nokia.
(Yes. Nokia). The phone company was an offshoot of the rubber company's cable division.
(The tyres on my car were Nokias too.) The Nokia boots weren't cheap, but they were lined with thick felt, supple and warm, with grippy soles that would take tungsten studs for grip on winter ice, and my feet would stay warm and toasty in minus twenty degrees C.
Find them here.



My new boots aren't Nokias, they're made by Scottish footwear makers Buckler.
At work I need to wear safety footwear, steel toecap and steel insole protection, in case someone drops something heavy on my poor little pinkies, or I step on timber with upward protruding nails. I've seen someone get a nail almost all the way through his foot on a demolition site. Anyway, if I buy safety footwear for work use, the company pays. I hate cheap wellingtons, they're rigid, cold, foot-chafing monstrosities, usually with no grip. I wanted comfortable warm grippy boots, and Bucklers make such a boot, the uppers are soft insulating neoprene foam, the soles are grippy...
And they're blue and fireball-orange! They're just the thing for wading through slush anf freezing mud, stomping across the field where my leather boots would be sogged in no time at all.

How'd ya like them boots, RDG?!






If it wisnae fur yer wellies where wid ye be?
ye'd be in the hospital or infirmary
cause you'd have a dose o' the flu or even pleurisy
if ye didnae have your feet in your wellies.

wellies they are wonderful
wellies they are swell,
cause they keep oot the water
and they keep in the smell.
and when you're sittin' in a room
you can always tell,
when some bugger takes off his wellys.

If it wisnae fur yer wellies where wid ye be?
you'd be in the hospital or infirmary
cause you'd have a dose o' the flu or even pleurisee
if ye didnae have your feet in your wellies.

Or when your out walkin' in the country wi' a bird
and your strollin' over fields just like a farmers herd
and somebody shouts keep aff the grass
and you think "how absurd"
and Squelch! you find why farmers all wear wellies

If it wisnae fur yer wellies where wid ye be?
you'd be in the hospital or infirmary
cause you would have a dose o' the flu or even pleurisee

there's fishermen and firemen there's farmers an all
men out diggin' ditches and workin' in the snow
this country it wid grind to a halt and no a thing wid grow
if it wisnae fur the workers in their wellies.

If it wisnae fur yer wellys where wid ye be?
you'd be in the hospital or infirmary
cause you'd have a dose o' the flu or even pleurisee
if ye didnae have your feet in yer wellys.

now MPs and the government
they hivnae made a hit
they are ruinin' this country
mair than just a bit
if they keep on the way their goin'
we'll all be in the shit....
so you better git your feet in yer wellies.

If it wisnae fur yer wellies where wid ye be?
you'd be in the hospital or infirmary
cause you would have a dose o' the flu or even pleurisee
if ye didnae have your feet in yer wellies.

6 comments:

  1. I just knew you'd find it!!
    Thankyou !!

    I like your work wellies. I just need a new pair of riggers-pity you can't get them re-soled, the tops are beautifully comfortable.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh my ... you've strayed far past your comfort colour zone with those wellies! I'm impressed - perhaps I've influenced you more than just a bit! I did google gz's comment and got as far as Billy Connolly (I now know more than I ever needed to know about him) - but I was not able to make the connection to this song until now. The best I got was a reference to his banana boots... So thank you!

      xxx

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    2. Admittedly, it rains here frequently, but since I only have to slog from building to car and thence to another building (usually over pavement), wellingtons would be overkill for me. My job involves sitting on my spreading behind and working on the computer. Ironically, that's true for most of my hobbies, too.

      Actually, since I live in Southern Texas where half the days of January were in the frigid seventies, I tend to slog through puddles in my sandals. My feet dry faster than shoes.

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    3. gz: Riggers are very variable in quality. I like the fleecy-lined ones. The best ones I ever had were from an industrial supply company I did a job for. While I was there, the manager had a problem with a fork-truck. I hauled it from where it had died, with my landrover, and fixed the hydraulic leak, for which he was very grateful. However, he wanted to pay me for that, though all fork-truck problems were supposed to be done by a contracted maintenance, who'd said "sorry, earliest we can get there is mid-day tomorrow."
      So he said... Is there anything in the store? I'll pay you in goods.

      And I got some fantastically comfortable, waterproof, supple, mega-expensive riggers. They were swedish-made, and so expensive he couldn't sell them. Their Aberdeen branch sells lots, to rich rig-workers.

      Stephanie: Get some wellies. Every girl deserves fantasy footwear.
      Red Dirt Girl also lives in southern texas, I guess when I visit, I'll have to plan an outing to somewhere for her to go splashing about in mud!

      Delete
  2. Replies
    1. Totectors, sadly no longer british-made....

      I used to buy their boots, I liked their complete confidence in their steel toecaps, which made any person who bought Totectors footwear insured against injury to toes by crushing or cutting. Early in my working days, I saw an accident in which a steel crate was accidentally dropped about four inches onto a man's foot. Horrifying... Yet he managed to pull his foot out of the pinned boot with no injury beyond a bruise.
      After that, I went out and bought my first steelies.

      Delete


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