Czech Security Guard

I was doing a night shift last night at the hospital and had a chat with the Czech security guard.

I told this guy that I thought it was so much better that in the Czech Republic, people always remove their shoes when entering homes.

He replied that when he moved to the UK from then communist Czechslovakia in the seventies, he had followed the custom of removing shoes for many years. He said many British people were surpised at him and asked whether it was a religious custom. However, he had since lapsed after living in Britain for over twenty years.

Will the recent wave of immigrants from eastern europe lapse from the custom of removing shoes as this older immigrant did? I do not think they will. For one thing, there are more of them. Furthermore, unlike the seventies and eighties, it is now common for British people to take off their shoes when visiting homes.