Secret Button World (or Cupboard)

As part of my job at Boden, I have to get in touch with our Tailoring Department to ask if they have any spare buttons. Quite often a customer will lose a button from their coat for example, and will have put the spare one in a 'safe place'. Or, as often happens nowadays, buttons just aren't sewn on securely enough, and so fall off after you've only worn the item a few times.

Almost every time I put in a request for spare buttons, I get a message back about a week later saying that one of the lovely ladies in our Tailoring Department has sent a handful of spare buttons off to that customer.

Which makes me wonder exactly what our Tailoring Department looks like....

Sadly, it's based in our Leicester office which I have never ventured to, so I've never seen what it looks like, and anyone who I know who has been to Leicester isn't really that interested. So I imagine a room full of jars or drawers with all the buttons sorted out. Maybe organised by colour, and material and size. I imagine like an old fashion sweet shop would look like, with jars of beautifully coloured sweets covering every inch of wall space, completely surrounding you. I imagine one of those sliding wooden ladders like you see in old fashion libraries to allow you to reach the buttons which are right at the top.....

This is such a beautiful picture in my mind, that I almost don't want to go and see it, as I don't want to be disappointed. But I am tempted to pretend I need some buttons and have them sent to me. The only problem is where to start...which colour to select first...

Travelling with Buttons - Part 2

So to continue my travelling with buttons, when I set off on my big travelling trip of 2009/2010, I made sure that I had plenty of buttons in my bag, along with a selection of thread colours and some needles.

I just can't believe the amount of people that I met who didn't know how to sew on a button. I met a few guys who looked like the epitome of  'scruffy backpacker' as they were wandering around with only 1 or 2 buttons left on their shirts.

My first big mend of the trip didn't actually involve buttons, but it was very successful. This amazing fixing effort was Taj's walking boot when we were climbing up Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. On the second day, I think it was, the sole was very much falling off the rest of the boot and so something needed to be done. At the time, I was walking with Mark, Taj, Barbara and Mark (there were 2, I'm not just confused). Using a combined effort of skills and donated thread, gaffer tape, elastic and string, we managed to fix Taj's boot so well that he still made it to the summit of Kili. Even though the porters all told him that because he's 'Indian' (he's not but the porters wouldn't listen otherwise) he wouldn't make it past 'Indian Point' (where all the Indians give up - apparently) we made it to the top! And back down!

And so Taj's boot became the symbol of international togetherness and teamwork (English/Bangladeshi/Swiss/American unitedness)....

I then replaced the buttons on a few shirts in Fiji, earning me free coconuts....(I was ripped off - you could just pick them up off the beach) and then much more excitedly at Beachouse, a free cocktail in exchange for each button sewn on.

I thought this was an amazing deal....but the recipients of my buttons were surprisingly grateful...and seemed to think that they'd got a good deal, as I'd saved them from buying a new shirt...

So on to South America and I ran out of buttons! But then round an amazing market in Pisac in Peru which had beautiful ceramic beads, and a shop selling plastic buttons.

And so I continued my travels around South America, and wherever I met someone who needed a button, I would replace it...and normally receive a drink in return. A very good way to travel, I very much recommend it. 

.....and then I found a vintage button market in Buenos Aires....I had to leave some of my clothes behind, but they had a charity clothes donation box in the hostel....and then I got buttons!

(I definitely do not class this as button addiction - just normal human behaviour!)

Travelling with Buttons

It always amazes me that there are so many people in the world who simply don't know what to do if a button falls off an item of clothing. I've seen people just look at the space where the button used to be and look....lost.

Which leads me on to - I can't believe how many people do not know how to sew on a button!! I know that I love sewing but seriously, it's not that hard! I think even my Dad, at a push, could sew on a button -although he'd probably wait until I came home.

When I first went to Kenya in 2005, I was teaching at a day care centre for children who lived on the local rubbish dump. All of the children were given their clothes by charities, or wore what they could forage from the rubbish dump and none of them seemed to have any buttons on their clothes. I know a lot of charity shops in England will cut the buttons off the clothes which they can't sell, before recycling the buttons, so I don't know if it was the same in Kenya, but the children never had any on their clothes.

Playtime was always very energetic; football, skipping, wrestling, play fighting, jumping -which meant a lot of almost losing of clothes. Boys would just leave their shirts flapping, almost like a superhero cape, girls would be always pulling up the shoulders of their dresses, and I quickly ran out of safety pins to hold up their trousers.

I then spent the next few nights after school scouring town for buttons. There were lots of shops and market stalls selling fabric, but none seemed to have any haberdashery, apart from the odd few spools of thread. I was taught that the Swahili word for 'button' was 'kifungo' so I don't know if it was my pronunciation, or the fact that a lot of people in Nakuru speak Kikuyu, or whether they just thought that it was such a strange request that a 'Mzungu' was after buttons?

Anyway, eventually I found a shop which only had clear small plastic buttons, and at 1 shilling each (there were 130KSH to £1 at this point) I bought 100.

So I spent the next few lunchtimes with a constant queue of children in front of me, and I sewed on buttons non-stop all lunchtime. Normally, most of the children would wear the same clothes every day all week, and then I guess washing day was at the weekend. However, as soon as I started my button fixing, they were soon wearing entirely different outfits every day, to make sure that I fixed all of their clothes before I got bored or ran out of buttons.

Of course, 100 buttons did not last me long (my fingers were pricked to shreds by this point) and so I soon had to go back to the shop and buy more. The man in the shop thought I was mental that I'd got through 100 buttons already. I did explain what I was doing with them, but I was still 'kichizi' (crazy).

'Kichizi kama ndizi' = Crazy like a banana (I love this phrase!)

I also had to sew a lot of button holes as a lot of the Dresses and Shirts didn't even have a button hole - let alone a button to go with it!

Enough for one blog I think - Travel with buttons part 2 will follow soon...

Gibraltar - Mini England with Monkeys

I've just got back from a lovely holiday with Lizzy in Gibraltar. It was a bit of a random choice to go there, seeing as I've never really thought about going to Gibraltar before, but the criteria were cheap flights, and sunshine so Gibraltar was perfect. 

We landed, feeling like we were about to fall into the sea, as it surrounds the runway on all sides, waited for the road which crosses the runway to re-open, and then wandered into town to find our Hotel.

Gibraltar has the feel of a Spanish town, combined with a small English seaside town, but then has things like a Marks & Spencer's, Topshop, Accessorize, which make it feel more like a small English town. 

We spent a day up on top of the rock, which you can't really miss seeing as Gibraltar is pretty much entirely rock! There are loads of monkeys which live on the rock, and are fed by the government to stop them coming into town and keep them healthy. However, they also liked to steal bags from tourists in case there was food inside. One monkey even jumped onto my head and started rummaging through my head looking for something....as long as he didn't give me anything....

Also on top of the rock are a cave which is full of stalactites and stalagmites and has such perfect acoustics that it has been turned into a concert hall. 

There are also caves from World War 2 with the canons set into the side of the rock ready to fire on intruders, and a Moorish Castle. After walking through a MOD base trying to take a short cut, we made it back into town, with 2 very exciting toy monkeys, and plenty of photos. 

As it is tax free, alcohol in Gibraltar is extremely cheap...but there didn't seem to be many lively places to drink it! We explored quite a few restaurants and bars..but never found any that were remotely busy!

There were also dolphins to see on a boat trip around the bay, and lots of old town walls and monuments to see around the town. As the whole of Gibraltar is only 6 and a bit sq km, it wasn't hard to wander around everywhere and see everything we wanted, in the lovely sunshine!

I would definitely recommend a visit, although watch out for the cash points which do seem to charge you, and take a bag to bring back lots of alcohol!!