Shoe Shop

	Shoe Shop

	The assistant is a smiling, mad, middle-aged woman. A customer enters.
Customer	Hello, there’s a pair of shoes in the window.
Assistant	That’s right. We do it because it’s a shoe shop.
Customer	They’re black lace-ups, fifteen ninety-nine.
Assistant	Are they?
Customer	Yeah, can I try them on?
Assistant	On your feet?
Customer	Yes.
Assistant	All right, why not?
	She blunders into the window and comes back with any old pair.
Customer	No, sorry, the black ones, they’re a flat lace-up.
Assistant	Beg pardon?
Customer	Those aren’t flat.
	She breaks the heels off.
Assistant	Flatter now.
Customer	But they’re red.
Assistant	They are quite red, aren’t they?
Customer	I want a black pair.
Assistant	I know. I can never get what I want when I go shopping.
Customer	They’re in the window.
Assistant	Are they?
	She runs into the window.
	Get out! Get out! We think we’ve got hens in the skirting-board. We found droppings by the pop-sox. I think they’re droppings. Mrs Brinsley says they’re Janine’s liquorice allsorts – she won’t eat the black ones. Now what was it you wanted?
Customer	No those, I want the black ones.
Assistant	They’ve been swept up. You don’t think someone might come in asking for hen-droppings in a shoe-shop.
Customer	Hen droppings are white – sheep droppings are black.
Assistant	I don’t think we’ve got sheep in the skirting-board, unless they’re breeding them very small. They may be, with Lady Helen Windsor setting a trend for fingerless gloves.
Customer	Can I try on the black lace-ups in the window?
Assistant	Well you can, but everyone in the street will be able to see you.
Customer	Can you get them in my size and I’ll try them on here?
Assistant	All right, we’re not busy.
Customer	I’m five and a half.
Assistant	You’re very tall, do you take vitamins?
Customer	My show size is five and a half. Do you have the black lace-ups in that size?
Assistant	We might have.
Customer	Can you go in the stockroom?
Assistant	Yeah, I can go anywhere here, toilets, backyard, they’re very free and easy…
	She goes off, singing ‘Look at me, I’m as helpless as a kitten up a tree’. Comes back with the shoes.
	Are these the ones?
Customer	Yes.
Assistant	I don’t like them.
Customer	What?
Assistant	Because I know this woman, and she had a pair and she got knocked down by an industrial tribunal, and the doctor says she’s to wear ponchos.
Customer	I haven’t got a poncho.
Assistant	Neither had she. We did a sponsored crochet but she moved to Norwich.
Customer	They’re a bit tight.
Assistant	Janine? Can I have your shoe horn please?
	Janine chucks it over. The assistant scratches her back with it and chucks it back.
	Ta. What were you saying.
Customer	No, they’re too small.
Assistant	You’re like me broadfooted – and are you a Taurus and can’t stick cabbage?
Customer	No.
Assistant	You’re not like me, then. Look, you’d better go. They don’t like me sitting down and talking in shop hours.
Customer	Couldn’t I try a bigger size?
Assistant	No, I’m in enough trouble as it is. You come in here asking for hen droppings, you want to get changed in the window – this is a shoe shop not a soft porn video merchant’s, and I should know because my husband runs one. Well, he’s not my husband, but he rubbed up against me in a sports jacket so he’s as good as. And it’s no good offering me used notes and trips to Bermuda because I’ve got a rare skin disease and can’t go in the sun without a Woman’s Realm on my head. So you can stuff it because I know my rights; I voted Conservative but the chappy didn’t get in because lots of people round here had to stay in and watch television that night, and I never wanted free milk anyway, I’m allergic – sores run in our family.
	Girl goes. Janine wonders over.
Janine	Wrong size?
Assistant	Yes, she was like me, broadfooted.

	Cast
Customer	Victoria Wood
Assistant	Julie Walters
Janine	Celia Imrie
	First shown on Victoria—Wood As Seen on TV, on BBC2 in January 1985.

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