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The Joy of Nip and Tuck

The Joy of Nip and Tuck

Author: by Jo Rushby
Date: 2024-06-25

I was rummaging in a charity shop. Full to bursting with clothes, worn once, a button missing here, a rent as slight as Twiggy there. It's indicative of our throw-away society.... we wear, tear and disappear. In a pile of socks and polka dots, a cardigan. Soft to the touch. I know my wool and could sense that this had come from deep in the Scottish Highlands where sheep are fed on haggis and single malt whisky and are kept warm with kilts.

But as I adjusted my specs, I saw the cardigan was replete with more holes than the road that takes you into Kwadukuza. Its' time zipped up. Decades. How does Detrixhe put it: 'With a shock, we become acutely aware of the passage of time, in ourselves as well as our clothes.'

I was determined to rescue this timeless gem. In throwing things away, we throw away memories that we can touch and feel.

So, every morning, I sit in my comfortable nook that catches the sun, coffee in hand, and nip and tuck each tiny cavity. Like Florence Nightingale, suturing sores, closing deep wounds. You see cardigans were born out of blood. The name comes from General James Thomas Brudenell, the 7thEarl of Cardigan who wore it at the Battle of Balaclava. It was a battle that entered the history books through Tennyson's 'Charge of the Light Brigade':

When can their glory fade?

O the wild charge they made!

All the world wondered.

Honour the charge they made!

Honour the Light Brigade,

Noble six hundred!

Far from the blood of battlefields, we can commit to ensuring that the glory of things past never fades. There is something uniquely satisfying about mending, a kind of Zen meditation. It is also a way to cajole us into darning rather than dumping, to heal rather than hurt. It reminds us that perfection is not absolutely necessary.

Surrendering to the timelessness and patience of mending can bring a sense of calm and quietness, a process. "If the universe is all one, as the Buddhists say, you and the project are part of the same and the separation is only imagined.'

I must go now. I have a balaclava to mend.