Cryptic #8

Half a life or none.

That is the question. 

[caution: visual pun]

  [image from random shoe review site]

It's as if I'm double daring myself to not write a word.

5.

A decade is such a comforting packet of time - so metric, so metronomic; it passes on, no matter what the everyday messes and triumphs. A decade since this.

And a half decade? It's equally neat: half done, half left before you can draw line through it. You can draw a line through this. A neat diagonal. It ties the year up efficiently.A half-decade since that.

July is both this and that. A half-decade? A whole decade? Really?

(Really).