Reasons why Fran will never be on that Great British Sewing Bee programme

Lying on my bed is a pair of black trousers. They need some sewing work done but I am to needlework what Donald Trump is to coherent discourse and am putting it off.

I bought the trousers one summer, several years ago. The label said 'medium length' but when I first wore them, the hems smothered my shoes, dragged along behind me like two recalcitrant children, and yelled to the world, 'This is a shortarse if ever there was one. There's enough spare material here to cover a three-piece suite.'

I turned the trousers up to a more reasonable length but, that day, didn't have any black cotton. So, I waited until I could get to the shops to buy black  used silver-grey cotton instead and kidded myself that the stitches wouldn't show if I was careful.

Wouldn't show? Wouldn't show?  Perhaps if I was to needlework what Donald Trump is to verbal gaffes they wouldn't have shown. But -

I wore the trousers to school the next day and taught the first lesson of the morning to teenage cool-dude A level English students. Until you've been a middle-aged plumpy teaching a roomful of fresh-faced cool-dudes who can throw chopped and irregular layers of garments in different colours and patterns on top of a hangover and still look fabulous, you may think I'm exaggerating about how one's confidence can be destabilised by a touch of amateur needlework.  Some of the students were no doubt future fashion designers who'd learned at the feet of mothers who'd hand-sewn their ivory christening gowns in tiny elegant Jane Austen fully-matching-ivory-cotton stitches, with sequins, beads and all.

The lesson took place in a classroom with the sun crashing in at the window, its beams focused on my trouser legs, cruelly lighting up those silvery stitches as a car headlight picks out a cyclist's fluorescent jacket or strobe lighting picks out dandruff. My fumbling, clumsy stitches, quite clearly sewn in by someone with pork chops for fingers, dominated my thoughts and I tried to keep my legs tucked under the chair. No doubt some students were thinking, 'She looks tense. Why is she curled up like that? I hope that's not a diarrhoea bug she's trying to keep under control.'

I put the trousers in my wardrobe that night. 'I'll re-sew them tomorrow,' I said, 'with black thread.'

The next day, I re-sewed them. That was in 2013.

There they are now, lying on the bed.

I really ought to get round to taking out those silver stitches and re-sewing them.

I really ought.

After all, it's my half-term, and I'd have the time.





On the other hand, there's a nice lady in a shop fifteen minutes' walk from here who does sewing jobs and repairs for a very reasonable fee.

It would surely do me good to get out for a walk tomorrow ...