There is something faithful about a shoe that will only love one surface. This one is for clay and nothing else, and I find that admirable rather than limiting. The outsole is made for loose ground — it must hold you while you slide and then let the clay go rather than pack it in and turn slick.

Power Cushion+ sits underneath to take the landing and return a little of it to your next step. Hyper MSLite keeps the whole thing light, Durable Skin Light guards the upper where a sliding foot scuffs, the Power Graphite Sheet supports the arch, and Double Raschel Mesh lets the heat out.

The sole is rounded so the foot rolls through instead of slapping.

Standard fit, around 275 grams in a 24.5, and it comes in pale pink, which on a red court is the loveliest colour pairing in the sport and I will not be talked out of it.

A clay outsole is a fine, closely worked tread, and abrasive concrete erases it. Wear it where it belongs and it will slide you into balls you had written off; wear it where it does not and you will have ruined something beautiful in a fortnight.

The practical warning is the same as the promise: keep it off hard courts.

And Roermond, which is where I would take anyone who thinks stone cannot feel anything.

Inside the Munsterkerk — squat, late Romanesque, older than most of the town around it — there is a tomb where the count and countess who founded the place lie carved side by side, heads on cushions, hands together, and they have been lying like that for something close to eight hundred years while empires came and went outside.

Then along the street is the Cuypershuis, the house and studio of Pierre Cuypers, who spent his life restoring old buildings and clearly could not bear to live away from them.

Eight hundred years side by side in stone, and the town has simply built itself around them.

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