Gathering The Threads by Maggie Cobbett

My needlework skills proved handy when a costume manager was needed . . .

APINAFORE’S a kind of apron, isn’t it? Don’t you think it’s a stupid name for a ship?”

Startled, I followed my granddaughter’s gaze to the poster outside the Grand Theatre. Advertising our local Gilbert and Sullivan Society’s latest show, it featured a 19th-century sailing vessel on a stormy sea.

“Yes, pet, I suppose it is. But that’s why the name was chosen. It was supposed to be a joke, you see. Pinafores were only worn by girls and women and that’s a warship.”

“Well, I don’t think it’s very funny. And who are those people in the photographs?”

“Just a minute. I’ll have to put my glasses on. Oh, yes. I see. They’ll be the leading lady and the handsome sailor she wants to marry but isn’t allowed to. It all works out well for them in the end, though.”

Bored, she was already moving on, but one day I’ll tell her what she owes to “H.M.S. Pinafore”.

“It will come as no surprise to anyone that this year’s prize for exceptional service to the school goes to Susan Adler.”

The applause that followed nearly took the roof off the town hall and continued for several minutes, accompanied by cheers and the stamping of feet. Big feet, belonging to Johnny Braime and his friends, who were more comfortable in rugby boots than their polished school shoes.

Weaverthorpe School’s annual Speech Day was generally a sedate affair, but the headmaster and staff made no attempt to quieten things down.

Even the mayor was beaming at me as I made my way, crimson-faced, up the steps to the platform to receive his congratulations, a silver cup and a book token for five guineas.

“Well done, Susan,” Mr Stone, my form teacher, whispered as I passed him on the way back to my seat.

“Thank you, sir. I couldn’t have done it without you,” I whispered back.

I could only pinpoint my parents, who were sitting several rows behind, by the feather on Mum’s new hat, but I knew how proud they were of what I had achieved.

I doubted I’d have been in the running for any school prize if it hadn’t been for Mrs Marshall’s unscheduled departure. Don’t get me wrong – I was always a hard worker; just a doer rather than a thinker.

Anyway, Mrs Marshall was my favourite teacher and the needlework room had been my second home ever since I moved up from junior school.

Sewing was in my blood, you see. My grandparents on Dad’s side had been brought up the hard way in the East End of London, where 18-hour days in backstreet sweat shops were not unheard of.

Dad himself had been taught to sew as soon as he was old enough to be trusted with a needle.

“You kids today don’t know you’re born,” he’d often tell us, going on to describe how he and his brothers had worn socks darned until the original pattern was unrecognisable. Jackets and trousers, bought second-hand to begin with, would be patched at the elbows and the knees.

“As for my sisters,” he’d add, “the hems on their skirts went up and down as often as a fiddler’s elbow.” I was curious.

“You mean as the fashions changed?”

“No, sweetheart, that wasn’t it. I mean that they were passed round from one to the other until they were only fit for the rag bag.”

Obliged to leave school at fourteen, my father had been apprenticed to a tailor, but he left to join up as soon as war was declared. Wounded in the hand, he never regained full use of it and had to switch to a job in sales.

He retained his ability to spot high-quality work, though, and was scathing of gents’ outfitters whose “bespoke” suits sported button-holes made by machine rather than hand.

Mum was a competent needlewoman, but it’s Dad’s critical eye that I’ve always kept in mind when I’m sewing.

Mrs Marshall and I got on well from the start. In the first form, the task was to make a cookery apron for use the following year. In white cotton