How to mend (almost) anything

‘Sides to middle’, that’s the cry. When your foot goes through the flat sheet in the night, there’s only one thing for it: scissors down the centre, then sew it edge to edge. Good as new – for as long as your stitches hold up. If you’ve paid for Egyptian cotton, you cannot cut your linen into dusters the minute the thread count wears thin.

Besides, call it eco-activism, call it penny–pinching, mending things is fun. From time to time, when my husband is washing up, a plate will crumble like a biscuit in his hands. Seeing his ‘it wasn’t me’ expression, I’ll tell him that the plate, glued and glued again, was beyond salvation. Then I’ll glue it together again. My mum saves her shards believing I have some magic Bostik touch. I don’t. But I’m patient and I’ve always liked jigsaws. (Top tip: keep a bottle of nail-polish remover handy.