Every picture tells one

By: roughseasinthemed

Nov 01 2011

Category: Childhood

5 Comments

Another post on the lines of sartorial elegance?

Poor Golly was looking rather out of sorts. He had been looking out of sorts for some time.

‘Hello Golly,’ I said. ‘You have been eating too much. Your trousers have split.’

Golly didn’t answer. Just rolled his eyes and continued to look sad.

He sits at the dining room table with us. We have three chairs. One for me, one for Partner, and Golly sits at the other one.

The reason we have three chairs is because they were my parents’ kitchen table chairs. Most people have two, or four, but no, my parents bought exactly three for the occupants of the house. Them and me.

They clearly weren’t planning on entertaining. Actually when they did entertain it was the full dining room job with lots of chairs and a huge table.

So back to the kitchen. When I was at school, aged relatives were invited to lunch, and there were still enough chairs to go round, ie two chairs for parents and my chair for aged relative. Bit of a problem if it was school holidays though. Then my mother ended up sitting martyrishly on the folding stool from the old 60s caravan.

Anyway, that’s why there are us and Golly gathered around the dining room table.

Now fired up with my enthusiasm for patching and mending – it’s only taken me 50 years to work out how to do it, despite being a whizz at rustling up Vogue Designer patterns in my younger years – I looked at Golly’s holes.

I decided to patch him up with some bright red linen. I looked again. There were more holes than you could poke a stick at.

A new plan was needed. I would be patching for ever. Making trousers is pretty simple, I have made lots of them. Golly’s were even simpler. A front and a back. But the back of his lovely striped trousers were still perfect, so I decided to make a new front set, and sew them into the existing seams.

‘Won’t that decrease the value?’ asked Partner.

What value, I thought. Poor dear is ripped to bits. And anyway he’s not for sale.

I cut the trousers out, and left him while I thought about it.

One night, inspiration struck. I would bandage up his tears and rips with interfacing. I love interfacing.

And, regrettably, Partner was right. I think I will make a whole set of new trousers and pop them over the top. For next time though.