Like you, since childhood I have been mad about RUBBER BOOTS and the guys who wear them. Heavy rubber boots (and particularly black ones) “light up” all my senses : the sight of boots, their virile smell, the wonderful curve of their leg at the calf, the reinforcement of the top of the leg : —the fantastic smell of new boots which are really fragrant with the robust rubber of tyres ; —the odour of worn boots where the smell of feet mix with the rubber : —the noise, nothing is more exciting than the muffled and fantastic sound of big rubber boots when someone is walking ; —the touch, that is to say, the sublime feel of the rubber : and also this sensation so particular and so agreeable that you feel when you put them on and have put on a pair of boots. I fully share your feeling when you say “good in my head and good in my boots”. When autumn arrives, I wear only big rubber boots nearly all the time when going out, even if it is sunny and perfectly dry !

       Sometimes, in this case, people say such things as “Oh, you are in boots, you have put big boots on”… or I can see some glances at my booted feet. I don’t care at all of all that and, better, it makes me pleased to see that people notice my booted feet. I love to go out with the same look —head completely shaved, rubber jacket, jeans, sometimes slightly dirty or rubber jeans— but only if it is raining and of course with my black boots on my feet. When I have just had myself shaved zero at the hairdressers and get back home, I still use the razor to ensure that I really have a “shaved head”.

       It reminds me of a scene that I witnessed some time ago. It was in the country in the Jura Neuchatelois area —not far from Les Fourgs— where rubber boots were obligatory for the farmers and I was visiting a family. A mobile shoe seller arrived. The youngest boy of the family needed a pair of boots. This boy, who must have been about twelve, insisted many times about the boots that he was going to buy a pair, saying “I want some boots but in rubber”. Boots in a synthetic material would, it seemed to me, have been perfectly suitable if he only wanted a pair of work boots. But then, if so, why did he insist that he wanted a pair of boots “but in rubber” ? Today, this boy must be about thirty years old. He is not married. Is he also a lover of rubber boots ?