When I lived in London, I would always see a single shoe, just one, half of a pair, on the street. I would see them in gutters, placed carefully on walls and hiding away in dank doorways. Why only one? Where was its friend? I started to think that there could be some sort of shoe, Highwayman.

“Stand and deliver! Your shoe or your life!” Or maybe there were vast numbers of urban pirates descended from Long John Silver, hiding in plain sight? In Tooting?