As for good shoes, that's not simply a right, it's a duty. The problem with Western democracy is that finding a good pair of shoes involves a kind of quest, and a mortgage. It's the sort of detail that Thomas Paine did not forseee. All shoes should be good! All commodities should be good quality, because that's their only justification (dialectical materialism, by the way). This is not a question of taste: it's a question of craft and personal dignity. It's not that I'm opposed to sandals, flip-flops and espadrilles (except when worn off the beach); it's just that I am opposed to, say, leather loafers that start to lose their colour after a month. Leather's not supposed to lose it's colour. Hair is, but not leather.
I have a modern outlook; I suppose you could say I'm against the forces of reaction (strict Marxist critique, obviously). I don't necessarily concur with Norman Mailer's utter distaste for plastic, for example. Ambivalence is sacrosanct, nevertheless there's something elemental about plastic. It's the only man-made substance that has the longevity of rock, and maybe exceeds that. Its capacity for immortality demands a certain basic respect. Another example: litter infuriates me, but I'm also impressed by its persistence. In an empty world light years into the future there will still be Top Shop bags and empty cans of Vanilla Coke scraping the ruined pavements of Oxford Street. It will be the final triumph of trash. Another thing: helium balloons that escape the hands of upset children. For some reason, millennia from now, I imagine empty skies full of drifting balloons. Then I feel humbled, as if God had just pushed me off a chair.
Air travel is the great joy of now. If you ever see me on a plane you won't, because my face will be stuck to a window. I'll be dribbling with joy. "Clouds! The sea! A flock of geese!" Really, it's pathetic. But I'm not ashamed. Should a plane I was on be hijacked, I wouldn't notice until the very last moment. On a plane, I have no concept of death. A surge of immortality colonises my soul. I'm like Leonardo da Vinci on a night flight. It's my only genuine moment of vision. Flying to New York last March, I watched the sun set, and felt truly omnipotent. "I'm Icarus, but you won't melt my wings!"