Singer

I LEFT MY CAMERA IN WORK YESTERDAY!!! Panic. Fortunately, I do have my phone.

This is a picture of the stand for my sewing machine. Its off an old Singer treadle machine that my granddad used - he would mend things, and make simple clothes. He had it upstairs in his bedroom, and, since their house was an old croft house, with only floorboards between up and down, you could hear him treadling away whenever he was sewing. The only problem was that he was extremely colour blind, so I remember him making my brother a pair of dark grey trousers once, with emerald green stitching, because he couldn't tell they didn't match. I wonder what photos - and, indeed, the world in general - looked like to him. He was in the merchant navy for years, and sailed all round the world, but when I knew him he worked for the council, on the roads. He was pretty deaf, and I think he preferred the quiet life, as, whenever someone acquired a hearing aid for him, it never worked for very long. He dropped down dead one day, while he was out fixing a fence, when he was 80. Seems like a pretty reasonable way to go.

There. If I hadn't left my camera, I would probably have taken a picture of the small amount of snow we had today, and not had this lovely little remembering session. Every cloud.

My sewing machine is a modern electronic one (well, actually, its nearly 30 years old now), but I like using the table he used. The drawer came full of all the bits and pieces he had left in there, but I threw most of them away and filled it with my own. It still smells the same though. I make no apology for the dust. Anyone who has time to dust table legs has too little to do.