“I’VE ALWAYS ADMIRED A WOMAN IN SENSIBLE SHOES”
A playful new number finds romance in the most practical corner of the wardrobe
There are love songs about beautiful eyes, moonlit evenings and stolen kisses.
Gabriel Undici’s latest song from the world of Mind The Trams takes a rather more Lancashire approach.
It starts with a pair of shoes.
“I’ve Always Admired a Woman in Sensible Shoes” is a warm, humorous character song inspired by the everyday lives, friendships and courtships of Oswaldtwistle in 1939.
In a musical populated by bakery girls, mill workers, postmen, policemen and tram passengers, perhaps it was inevitable that somebody would eventually fall in love with sensible footwear.
DORIS, HOWEVER, MAY TAKE SOME CONVINCING
Those familiar with Doris Whittaker will know that practicality and footwear have not always enjoyed the closest of relationships.
Whether walking with friends towards Haslingden or hurtling through Oswaldtwistle on her bicycle Woody, Doris has always preferred a little style to common sense.
Her friend William perhaps puts it best:
“Who needs sensible shoes when you have a pair of heels you’d die for?”
It is precisely that contradiction which gives the new song much of its charm.
Behind the joke lies something characteristic of Mind The Trams: affection expressed not through grand declarations, but through noticing the tiny things about another person.
The shoes they wear.
The way they walk.
The little habits nobody else appears to notice.
ROMANCE WITH BOTH FEET ON THE GROUND
Set against the streets of Oswaldtwistle and Accrington, the song continues the musical’s celebration of ordinary Lancashire lives before the outbreak of war.
There are no grand society ballrooms required here.
No Hollywood gowns.
Sometimes romance begins on wet cobbles, outside a bakery, waiting for a tram — wearing shoes sturdy enough to get you home afterwards.
And perhaps that is why the song feels so comfortably at home in Mind The Trams.
For all its humour, it understands something rather simple:
When you truly admire somebody, even their sensible shoes can become beautiful.
THE HERALD VERDICT
★★★★★
“A LOVE SONG WITH ITS FEET FIRMLY ON THE GROUND.”
Funny, affectionate and unmistakably Lancashire — proof that romance doesn’t always arrive wearing high heels.
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