The Clodhoppers

Daniel's father's shoes were kept on a rack at the bottom of the larder. On Sundays, the dining room table would be covered in Saturday's newspaper and one by one, his Dad would buff each pair to glimmering, before sitting them on the table to breathe; two loafers, two brogues, two moccasins, an Oxford, a chukka, a pair of Adidas Agassi Special Edition tennis shoes that he called plimsolls and a ruthless looking pair of black winkle-pickers. His father would sit at the high-backed chair with his shine box in his lap, selecting sprays, waxes, stiff brushes and scuffed yellow cloths with red trim. He slipped his left hand into each shoe as his right hand rubbed, scrubbed or chivvied.

Early in the morning on his eighteenth birthday, Daniel took his father's A-frame ladder from the back garden, wedged and tied it into the back of his 1986 Toyota Camry and headed for the estates of Glase and Penclawdd. Later, the police would say he had not been difficult to track down because his car boot was up like a sail with the A-frame's legs awkwardly sticking out the back.

The first ones Daniel took down were a pair of size 9, Hi-Tec Hot Stars in white with fluorescent yellow trim. They were hanging from the phone lines near Mayhill Chapel, which also served as a youth club on Wednesday nights. The shoes had been tied together with a perfectly symmetrical bow.

The second pair were scuffed green Doc Marten's, size thirteen, hanging like mistletoe from the power lines next to the train tracks. Dan wore thick welding gloves and a balaclava as he climbed the ladder to delicately cut them loose with a pair of kitchen scissors.

The first pair that fitted him were nearly-new Kickers, size eleven, swinging in the wind near Cwmdonkin park. Without untying his laces, he'd kicked off his old Vans ' their toes were open as alligator jaws; the soles had eroded into the honeycomb innards; the logos had faded to dust ' and placed them on the back seat next to the Hi-Tecs and the DMs.

He sat at a bench and carefully put on his new Kickers; he pulled his right foot up on to his left knee and examined the shoe. He ran his finger down the tongue, knicking each eyelet with the flat of his nail, massaging the ridged upper and on to the welt, into the cleft of the shank before following the heel back to the quarter, counter and up to the cuff. He said the words as he noted each feature.

His father had taught him to treat a shoe like a living thing, like an extension of your own body. On such terms, his father could not fathom Daniel's desire for "skate shoes, particularly Vans. His father's reasoning was compelling: they fall apart in a couple of months, you can't have them reheeled, they soon stink like sweaty laundry and, above all, each feeble pair costs sixty pounds and comes with a disclaimer: "This shoe was not designed for skating.

His father had bought Daniel a pair for his Seventeenth birthday. The note attached to the box said: "You are not taking these shoes off for at least twelve months. If they fall apart, that's your look out. His father couldn't abide to see shoes mistreated. Whenever he drove past a pair of perfectly good runners hanging from overhead wires, his jaw clenched and he gave the steering wheel a Chinese burn.

Daniel didn't come home for two months. From April to June, he covered the whole of South Wales, from Cardiff to Aberystwyth. On a dull morning in Newport, Pembrokeshire, he had not seen the police coming; his back window was obscured; four hundred and one shoes, in total. When they took him to the station to call his parents, he was wearing a faded pair of 1992 Reebok Pumps. His father blamed himself. So did his mother.

When they were reunited, his father cried. It was partly relief, and partly pride. In the summer months that followed, Daniel's father took some time off work so that he could spend some time with his son. The first thing they did was go through each and every pair of found shoes, itemising them into sports (73%), fashion (24%) and utility (3%).

As a welcome home gift for Daniel, his father went out and bought a talloscope. A talloscope is somewhere between a ladder on wheels and a cherry-picker. On weekends, they took it out to the playing fields at Blaen-y-maes, coming home, proud as poachers, with braces of Nike Air swung over their shoulders.