hugo's shoes

Over seven years ago, I started as house poet at Sven Ratzke's Late Night Show in Utrecht's Blue Hall. It was a special time. Not for Sven, who probably came into the world singing and wearing designer clothes through a curtain of peacock feathers and imitation ermine fur. For him, the sultry, permanently ramming sold-out nightclub show was cut-and-dried. For me, everything was new, as my wife was just pregnant with our first daughter.

A few weeks later, the house was full of pink wipes, rompers, dresses and other baby supplies. Around that time, a large silver skull ring I had ordered from Courts & Hackett arrived by post - the same ring Keith Richards wears, made by the same silversmiths who designed his.

I was not a father reclining in clouds of baby powder. I knew nothing about the prospect of a life that was going to be completely different and at least less rock 'n' roll. That side of my life was condensed into 35 grams of Sterling silver on my left hand, and in the five minutes a month I spent performing at Sven's in the Blue Hall, with my steadily expanding wife in the back, ever closer to the emergency exit.

The shows were a stark contrast to the midwives' surgeries where I sat a day or two later, catnapping after the performance: apart from the enchantment of Ratzke, his band and his musical guests, there were regular pole dancers, burlesque strip acts, drag queens and a barman in suspender belts, to name just a random sampling. Surely that is a different world from a consulting room full of wooden models of foetuses and the drowsy stares at the diver's clock of the ultrasound on which my daughter was happily swimming around.

I immediately noticed that Sven, his band and many of their guest musicians wore great shoes. After nagging for a while, the bassist was willing to reveal the secret: the lion's share came from the shop Mascolori in Rotterdam. The next day I put on my Keith ring, drank my coffee and drove there. Two years later, I had five pairs. That was all there was, because by then my daughter also needed shoes.

Then disaster struck: Hugo de Jonge appeared on the steps in 2017 wearing Mascoloris. Gone rock 'n' roll. There is still nothing wrong with my imitation anaconda boots, worn down to the wire, but the floral motifs will stay in the closet from now on: suddenly they are too Hugo, too ho-hum, too CDA.

Let me just say: democracy is also a diva, and sometimes requires cruel sacrifices.