Perhaps they're made of magic

I've finally caved in to public demands and the difficulty of walking in my old boots, and bought some new shoes from the cheap shoe shop in Derby. What fascinated me the most about these £7 bargains was the sticker inside listing the parts of the shoe and the materials they're made of. It goes "Upper: other materials. Lining and sock: other materials. Outersole: other materials."

I've seen some pretty uninformative labels in my time, but this has to be high on the list. Admittedly I'm not an expert on shoe material labelling - the last pair I bought was in 2003, and I don't think they had any such information inside them. But a quick internet search (you can find anything on the internet nowadays) tells me that this kind of detail about a shoe is standard, and that the alternatives to 'other materials' are leather and textile. But am I alone in being tantalised by the 'other materials' label? What's the big secret? What, just what, are these shoes made of?

They smell of something that's very evocative, but I can't quite remember of what. A sort of plasticky smell, not leather or shoe polish, but exactly like something non-shoe-related I've smelt in the past. In fact, I've just taken a deep noseful (checking first to make sure no tabloid photographers are around to snap a pic of the former world memory champion's shoe-sniffing fetish) and I'm fairly sure that they smell of Hero Quest. The role-playing-game-cum-board-game for young people who were into board games but not RPGs and might be interested in something to bridge the gap. Do they still make Hero Quest? I haven't seen it around for ages and Games Workshops seem to have drifted even further off into their own world since I last paid any attention to them. I just checked that on the internet too, and they don't. Shame.

Anyway, why would my shoes smell like Hero Quest? The board and box always had exactly that funny kind of smell. I think, anyway. Unless I'm confusing it with something else. But assuming I'm not, maybe they used the same cheap glue or paint? Hmm, the more I sniff these shoes, the less certain I am about that Hero Quest identification. But something made me think of it, for the first time in years, and I'm sure I didn't use to sniff shoes while I was playing it.

Damn it, now I'm not going to be able to wear these shoes until I've worked out what they smell like. And it'll just turn out to be a previous pair of shoes, I'll bet you. Good grief, how much have I written tonight about sniffing shoes? Maybe it's some kind of mind-altering narcotic smell. That would explain the purple lizards climbing the walls and exploding into patterns of rainbow caterpillars...