Triva

When it starts to get colder, I start to use an old duffel coat as an aid to watching television in the evening; a variation on the sit bags that some older people invest in. Not actually put on, rather used as a blanket, to which end I had removed all the buttons, toggles and so forth.

But I had not removed the hanging loop and the label inside, at the bottom of the hood - and this came to irritate me and I did then want to remove them. Scissors not too clever, but then I remembered about what BH used to call a pic n'nic or something of that sort. At one time we owned one, but no more.

Epsom no longer sports a haberdasher and while John Lewis at Kingston could probably have done one, it was a long way to go for such a small item. So Amazon it was, and after few days two of them arrived for £3.50 or some such sum. I should say, not the rather fancier one snapped above. Ours have brightly coloured plastic handles. Amazon  knows them as seam rippers.

The offending objects, now removed, without damaging the fabric underneath, in no time at all. I had forgotten about the way in which the images and lettering right are made left.

Zoomed. Not as informative as I had hoped.

We suppose that there is some kind of interaction between the numbers of ladies who still sew, the number of haberdasheries and the availability of this sort of thing online. In any event, another blow for all those older people, from a generation which sewed, who do not have access to the Internet - or who, at least, are not very comfortable with it. Or maybe they just like real shopping.

PS: Gemini was not able to parse BH's name for the thing, but he did have a good go. And he beat an orderly retreat when corrected.