201 Revealed!!!

[MacMillan of Rathdown]

The St. Andrew's Society of Washington DC is coming up on Saturday, November 14th. In preparation I decided to get a running start on polishing my shoes. Actually, make that polishing two pair of ghillie brogues, and one pair of formal, buckled evening brogues. The buckled evening brogues were very straight forward. Being patent leather all I had to do was remove them from their shoe bags, dust them down with a soft cloth, and I'd be good to go.

Or so I thought.

The shoes, even though they were in cloth shoe bags, were covered with a fine micro-grit, about the consistency of pulverized cigar ash. I knew in a trice what it was; MDF "dust", the sort of superfine sawdust that can hang in the air for hours, even days, during indoor construction. Fortunately the dust is a very pale tan, almost bone white, and easy to wipe of with a duster. It is also easy to see, leaving 201 white dots on each of my brogues.

My first thought at removal was to hit the shoes with a blast of compressed air. Good in theory, but not in practice. It didn't work. This left Plan B, which involved a box of Q-Tips (the kind with plastic, not paper, shafts, and a small jar of water.

After dipping the Q-Tip in the water I would squeeze out the excess, and then force it into a hole, twirl it back and forth between my thumb and index finger a few times, and then move on to the next hole and repeat the process. Generally, each end of the Q-Tip would last about ten holes. It occurred to me, as I was about halfway through cleaning the first brogue, that I should count the holes-- which I did on shoe #2, which had 201 perforations.

Once the holes were down and dusted I went back over each shoe with a Sharpie to colour in each hole just in case the Q-Tip hadn't removed all of the dust. I know this sounds really tedious, but it is worth it, and I always "Sharpie" my brogues because it subtly enhances the pattern of the brogue-ing. The whole process took about ten minutes, and the shoes now look wonderful.

I then attacked a pair of ghillie brogues and, after about five minutes, had raised an acceptable level of shine. Another few minutes with the Sharpie and the excess polish was removed from the perforations, leaving the pattern a wonderful inky soft black against the gleaming polish of the shoes. I'll do my final pair of ghillie brogues tomorrow, and then I'll make sure that everything else is squared away and ready to go for the Tartan Ball on the 14th.

Hopefully the rumored Royal Mail strike won't happen as I am awaiting delivery of a new doublet from Scotland. But if it does happen at least I've got enough lead time to call Matt and hire a jacket for the evening without having to worry about polishing my shoes!