Have you ever been stuck in a pair of wellies before? I don’t mean stuck in mud or stuck in cement, I mean the wellies are actually stuck on your feet and you think they’re going to be a permanent feature, with a likelihood you’ll be known forever more as “the woman in wellies.”

Wellies are a weird thing aren’t they. As a kid, wellies are great, they enable you to have fun splashing in puddles, they’re also great for muddy autumn walks, kicking leaves, playing in the garden and enjoying the snow with dry feet in the depths of winter. Isn’t snow brilliant when you’re a child? It’s only as you get older and have to drive in it or walk anywhere when it’s all been compacted and turned to ice that you realise it’s got an alter ego that’s annoying and dangerous, particularly for more vulnerable or elderly people. It looks so beautiful though doesn’t it! Would it be wonderful if the snow fell and just stayed pretty for a couple of days and disappeared before everyone got bored of it. When we were kids I think we’d wear a couple of pairs of socks and sometimes a plastic bag over them before putting the wellies on to play in the snow. That could be a distorted memory but I think it probably helped to keep our feet warm and dry.

When you’re a kid and your wellies are a bit tight it’s fine you can just ask your nearest grownup to help you pull them off.

As an adult though, the boot’s on the other foot and it’s a whole different ball game!

I find it quite hard to find a pair of wellies to fit my feet. My feet are quite wide (I think it’s hereditary as my sister’s are exactly the same.) I’ve also got the added joy of a very high instep which makes finding even normal boots to fit quite tricky, unless they’ve got laces or a zip. Can you just imagine the mission I have to endure trying to get a pair wellies that fit properly?

I take a size 6 usually, although I tend to buy six and a half or sevens in most shoes as they are a bit more comfortable. Are you supposed to buy wellies in a couple of sizes bigger so they can actually slide on and off easily, I’m not sure I’d like to wear size 9 wellies, I think they’d look a teeny bit ridiculous and also be near enough impossible to walk in. It would be like when you’re really little and put on a grownup’s welly boots and try and walk in them. You can’t bend your knee because the boots are so big so shuffle around like a robot. I think my Mum has a photo somewhere of me wearing my Grandad’s huge wellington boots – unfortunately at the moment we can’t find it so you’ll have to use your imagination and take my word for it that it’s a cute picture!

I tried a pair of wellies on in the garden centre the other day and it was a task in itself to get them on – which should have been a bit of a warning light. I squeezed into them and then had a little walk around to test their comfort – or lack of, decided they weren’t quite for me so went to take them off. That’s where the difficulty started. They weren’t going anywhere. Thankfully I wasn’t on my own so enlisted the help of my partner to get them off, thankfully also I might add, the garden centre was just about to close so there was no one else in the immediate vicinity. I sat there holding on for dear life to the chair I was sat on while he managed, with quite a lot of effort, to pull the boots off. Phew!

Can you just imagine the scenario if you went alone to the garden centre, tried on a pair of wellies and then came to the awful realisation that you couldn’t get them off? At all. No matter how hard you try those boots are hanging on to your feet like a dog holding on to it’s bone. Oh the shame! You’d have to get the assistance of a passer-by to help, of course after trying your best to pull them off or do that thing where you use the toe of one foot to push down the heel of the boot on the other foot. How humiliating would it be if they couldn’t release the boot either and had to enlist the help of someone else to pull them as they pulled the boot and you desperately clung on to the chair, hoping that you didn’t go flying across the room. It would resemble that scene from the book The Enormous Turnip, with the linked chain of the man, his wife, grandchildren, dog, cat and mouse all pulling with a “Heave, heave, HEAVE!” you’d feel like an enormous turnip with all that going on in some garden centre whilst you’ve got other people parading around trying hats on and trying to look like a country gent or lady of the manor.

I think there’s a moral to this story – never and I repeat NEVER go to the garden centre alone to try on wellington boots, unless of course you’re lucky enough to have pretty little dainty feet and slender legs that can just easily slide into any shoe, boot or welly.

Of course small and narrow feet possibly bring their own problems. I guess it could be quite hard for slim feet people to keep the boots on. It’s a bit of an opposite conundrum. Go for a walk in your wellies and the boots are a little bit too big and you’d end up having to crouch down and hold on to each boot for dear life every time you walk through mud, or wade through water. I guess jumping in puddles would be completely out the question, you’d be in danger of catapulting yourself into the nearest tree!

I’m happy to say I actually did manage to get some wellies that fitted – and in a size 7. I did dither a bit over choosing which style, colour and pattern to get – obviously (overthinkers club founder here.) In the end I opted for some navy ones with white spots as though they were quite cute. They’re short wellies too, mid calf length, so have the added benefit of less heave ho-ing involved to get them off. It’s been a pretty rainy week here so I wore them on today’s dog walk and they were a joy to walk in, it was lovely to walk through the puddles with the dogs and also to come home with dry feet for a change!

PS Pretty pink, slim knee length wellies, worn once and sat in my hall cupboard for an age, free to a good home!