Real stories · Slippers with an actual job

My feet ached even at home — it turned out my slippers were the one shoe I'd never taken seriously

Slippers with an actual job — that's what these turned out to be. I'm 67, and my feet had started aching at home. Not on walks, not in town — at home, standing at the kitchen counter, going up and down for laundry. I blamed my age, the floors, even the weather, before I looked down at the flat fabric envelopes on my feet and did the arithmetic: I spend more hours in my slippers than in any other shoe I own, and they were the only ones doing absolutely nothing.

What I needed was proper footwear that happened to live indoors.

Then I found the Polerine from a British label called York Boutique — orthopaedic slippers with a soft suede look, and I chose the blue, which is a surprisingly cheering thing to see by the bed on a dark morning.

These are built like real shoes that happen to be lined with fleece. There's actual arch support in the footbed and a cushioned sole underneath, which is why standing at the counter chopping vegetables stopped registering as a complaint — the support is doing the standing, not my arches. The sole grips hard floors properly, so the kitchen tiles stopped being a skating rink in socks. They're backless, so they go on without bending — feet in, day started. And the plush fleece lining sorts the cold-floor problem before it reaches you.

I count my shoes carefully for support — then spend six hours a day at home in flat fabric envelopes. These are the first slippers built like the shoes I actually trust.

You can send them back within a fortnight with free delivery, so I ordered my usual size and hoped — they fit true, and the little wedge is low enough to be steady, not wobbly.

Three weeks in, the evening foot-ache has quietly left the building, and Malcolm — who mocked the word 'orthopaedic' — has asked if they come in his size. They don't. They were £24.95 in the sale, half the usual £50.

If your feet also ache in the very place you're supposed to be resting, do have a look. The Polerine is rated 4.7 out of 5 by more than 260 women, it comes in blue, black and brown, in sizes 3 to 10 — and at half price, whole size runs disappear.