‘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. Best thing for ungluing fingers from thumbs.)
Japanese potters practice kintsugi, repairing broken pots with gold dust and lacquer. Then there’s sashiko – visible mending – dodgy needlework raised to an art. I’m a lousy seamstress (buttons stay on if you don’t tug too hard) so I take trickier tears to Moses, who works at the local dry cleaners. A man aptly named: he parts the seams and draws them together again. Find your own Moses. They’re worth their weight in lacquered gold.
Shoes go to Distinctive Shoe Repairs on Norfolk Street near Paddington station, open since 1951. Boots are re-soled, kittens re-heeled, belts punched with new holes. Jokes are on offer: ‘I’m no vicar, but I can certainly heal your sole.’ When I took a vintage Louis Vuitton bag, bought by my mum in the power–dressing 1980s, to the LV concession in Selfridges, the manageress looked at me like a cat that had brought in a uniquely mangled mouse.
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