boro man

starting jude's 21st century rags course (cwb) has brought thoughts of daddy to the surface in connection with mending and re-using - jude refers to respect for cloth, but i think with daddy it was more about a reluctance to discard (he had a strong sense of ownership, and was brought up not to waste things, materials were scarcer then) and a feeling of achievement and usefulness when he repaired something - if something broke he would find a way of repairing it with pieces scavenged from elsewhere and hoarded, like boro cloth

for years, when i came to visit i would bring something broken for him to repair - it was a way of keeping him occupied and out of the way for a while but also i knew that it gave him pleasure to conquer the brokenness and bring the item back to useful life - it was a way of asking him to help me in a way i knew he could and would want to

it seemed that everything had to be mended and re-mended and patched over and again - i remember mummy patching and darning vests, socks, shirts ....... but the vests in particular, he had an itchy area on his back which he scratched causing his vests to wear out in that spot (he wore a vest all year round!) first the weakened spot was darned with very soft thread so as not to cause more irritation, when the fabric got too weak to be darned it was patched - when a vest was really too far gone mummy was allowed to cut it up to use for patching other vests - eventually the vests became rags for cleaning, they were really soft and particularly good for polishing ... we still had silver and stuff which needed careful handling

but it went beyond clothes to everything - the house was full of things cobbled back together with wire, insulating tape, blobs of solder, araldite and all sorts of heath-robinsonesque combinations ... with sticky fingerprints and a characteristic lumpiness which always upset mummy, grammie and my sense of aesthetics

i think this is something i want to bring out in my memory piece - i'm glad i found a piece of old vest to include, sorry that mummy got rid of all his clothes before i had a chance to rescue a few more pieces - i have some fine wire of his which can be included as yarn for stitching, maybe i'll try a bit of darning with it?