Beach Shoes Saved My Life

Every so often an episode of That’s a Free Bee accidentally turns into a survival podcast. Episode 93 is one of those.

Let’s start with some follow-up from friend of the show Chris: apparently Victor Wright’s Electronics in Bury still exists. Yes, the same shop with the same faded cartridges, boxes, and consoles sitting in the window like a time capsule. Chris swears it hasn’t changed since the last millennium. Either Victor himself is an immortal vampire or someone’s still dusting those shelves once a year. Either way, a field trip might be on the cards.

From there, it was straight into family-holiday mode. We decided to squeeze in one last trip before the end of the school holidays. Now, I’m not exactly a “beach person.” Sand is my mortal enemy — dry, wet, stuck to your legs, it doesn’t matter, I hate it. But there’s one beach I tolerate, a beautiful, clean stretch of sand with no seaweed and lots of space. Unfortunately, it’s a two-and-a-half-hour drive. So instead, we went to Llandudno.

Cue chaos: traffic jams, seaweed stink, drunk beachgoers tossing cans around at 10am, and me being my usual beach-hating self. Things turned around when we bumped into friends by sheer coincidence. The kids had more people to play with, I managed to cheer up, and then — of course — disaster struck.

The kids drifted too far out into the sea. My daughter thought they were waving for fun. They weren’t. By the time I realised, they were stuck, panicking, and in real trouble. Cue me, beach shoes, and a whole lot of adrenaline. One kid I managed to push back toward shore. The other? She was tangled in seaweed and dragging under. At one point, both of us thought it was over. Then a wave slammed me to the bottom, my beach shoes gripped rock, and I managed to launch us both upward hard enough to break the seaweed free. We staggered back to shore, gasping, collapsing, and very much alive.

So yeah: turns out those weird rubber beach shoes saved my life. And hers. I’ll never make fun of them again.

Of course, the episode doesn’t stop at “near-death rescue.” We also check in on Goldie the Leopard Gecko, who’s been going through a rough patch thanks to diet confusion, dodgy humidity, and what looks suspiciously like a burn from his heat lamp. (Don’t worry — he’s on the mend, eating well again, and looking less like he’s had a bad haircut.)

Then there’s a story from the food court, which I can only describe as slapstick in real life. Imagine a woman juggling a ripping takeaway bag, sauce splashing on her brand-new cream Converse, a boyfriend who just mutters “you’ve got some on your shoe,” and somehow — somehow — she lifts both feet off the ground at once and crashes into the floor, covered head-to-toe in curry. No thanks, no words, just a slow shuffle out of the shopping centre. You couldn’t script it.

And of course, no Free Bee is complete without a tram story. This week’s: a 12-year-old puts on a balaclava, waves at passengers, shouts about not buying a ticket, and promptly gets told by inspectors that CCTV already caught his uncovered face. His reply? “Oh, I didn’t think of that.” Comedy and stupidity rolled into one neat little Metrolink package.

Finally, yes, I’ve launched yet another new website. The good news? This one might actually stick. It’s andonemorething.net. Cleaner, shorter, easier to say and type. You can still use the old URLs for a while, but this is the hub for all things Free Bee, Lore & Disorder, and whatever else I get up to.

So grab Episode 93 wherever you listen to podcasts. Come for the nostalgia about old electronics shops, stay for the gecko update, laugh at the curry chaos, and maybe — just maybe — appreciate the humble beach shoe.