Snow. Different views of reasonable pricing. Not wasting stuff.

It was snowing when I got up this morning. Over the last week I have got used to waking up to bright blue skies, even when it clouds over later, so this morning was a bit of a change. It wasn’t proper snow but rather that thin, sleety stuff that feels extra cold and wet. When I went out I found it was not quite so cold as it has been over the last few days but because of those cold days the ground and the pavements were cold and hard and dry enough for the sleety snow to stick. It gave me some nice Christmas-cardy photos but the horizons are very restricted. The hills have all disappeared. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I must be in a contrary mood this morning. Skimming through the papers online I came across this article by Jess Cartner-Morley. 

When I read her fashion pieces I do so tongue in cheek as she must live in a different world from ordinary folk. Today she was basically talking about how we should not be snobby about clothes and fashion labels. “High street fashion” should also be valued, she told us, a sentiment I could happily agree with. Apparently it is estimated that the average garment is worn only 10 times before disposal and according to research the number of times a piece is worn has decreased by an estimated 36% over the past 15 years. Much of it ends up in landfill. 

I wonder though if clothing from some of the high street shops she quotes often end up in landfill as they are not exactly cheap: Jigsaw, Mango, Marks and Spencer!!! I know people who simply can’t afford to shop in those places. 

The best quote, for me anyway, is this one: 

“My shoe cupboard has Choos and Manolos, but for the Fashion Awards last week I reached, as I very often do, for classic black patent courts from Russell & Bromley, which I’ve had for ever and are reliably comfortable.”

Now, I often look in the window of Russel and Bromley in the centre of Manchester and marvel at how much they manage to charge for perfectly nice but ordinary shoes. I have a friend who buys her shoes there but I also know people who find Clarks shoes too expensive!

I notice that Primark, a well known high street store, doesn’t get a mention. 

As regards how many “wears” an item of clothing gets, I often evaluate my clothes on that basis. One or two items still run at about £50 a wear but others are down to mere pence per wear. 

And yesterday, as it was so cold, I resurrected a full-length coat which I must have had for thirty years. Wrapped in my long coat with its big hood - the family call it my “Scottish widows’ coat” because of an ancient advert for an insurance company - I ventured into the bleak cold!  No landfill! 

I try to recycle my clothes through charity shops. 

Related to the topic of not wasting stuff, it seems there was an article, which I didn’t read, about someone’s mother who hoards stuff. A couple of letters about this article went as follows:

“On clearing his mother’s house after she died, a friend of mine found numerous different sized boxes in her kitchen cupboards, all of them neatly labelled. One said “String – too small to be of any use”.”

“My late father had a tin labelled “Pieces of string too short to be of use”. I never understood whether this was just a joke, but it did contain bits of string.”

My own father had similar collections of useless bits of string. In bis shed he had seed catalogues dating back to the 1950s. But he was also the go-to person if you needed an odd screw of a difficult size - he kept them carefully organised in his shed.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!