*Ladies* of *Cambridge*

Your week is filled with factory-fresh Mercedes and traffic lights routinely set fifty feet apart. Silky wet tram tracks, clamouring children, a bevvy of hurried umbrellas. But today is quiet, you’re half asleep—lacy shop fronts and flourishing billboards curtsying to a nonexistent audience on the footpaths below. You might see somebody different here today; a shabbily dressed musician busking on the street, a beat-poet girl writing in the park, a few joggers blasting indie from their ipods. But in all likelihood, there’ll still be the women.

“What do you want with those shopping bags, Carmen?”  (paper, cardboard, plastic.) “I use biodegradable ones now.” Because, at last, being environmentally friendly has caught up with the upper-middle class, who don’t start trends; (far too busy, they merely follow.) Except for perhaps, those recurring slate grey fisherman’s pants and crocodile print boots;

“Well like Jean said, you simply can’t get them anywhere further east than Camberwell.”

But you’re not impressing us one little bit, Jean darling—with your handmade jewellery and vintage designer purse. Postmodern fashion died in the arse in the nineties and you’re nothing more than the wealthy dregs of its remnants. Today it’s especially prominent;

“Size thirty-three point five, thankyou.” Like we’re in Paris or Denmark; “forgive me, sometimes I forget what country I’m in!” Arctic white teeth flashing.

“Oh! That some of us should be so lucky.” (Tongue clamped between your own teeth as you mentally subtract that sum into English.)

And at the counter; “Are you sure that’s the final price?” All bargaining and batering like we’re in Malaysia or Singapore and she’s struggling to feed her sobbing malnourished offspring wasting away at home.

“In this economic climate you have to watch every cent you spend.” Insurance banker husband, hefty paternal inheritance, crown jewels aside; “No, we really can’t afford that today.”

“Well, better keep those credit cards in their wallet then, darling. Those shoes simply don’t fit and I really don’t have the time.”  (You have till five, actually.)

Five more robotic hours, to think about tonights frozen food, Penelope’s childhood and how, five years ago, you would have given anything to live here.

“But now she’d much rather be north, or north-west. It’s this suburb, see. It’s just no good anymore.”

It never was going to suit you anyway. You’d be much better off in the North. Yes, in the shabby cafe’s with ochre crockery and wooden utensils off Sydney road, or in the musty shops on Smith street, damp like you’re grandmother’s closet. You always were a a sucker for nostalgia, for it’s fleeting back dissapearing around a street corner, it’s fading footsteps on a grey footpath leading to nowhere. Nostalgia grows so much better in the North.

“It’s just the right climate, and besides, out here we really don’t have the time.”

You’d be much better off to take that vinyl suitcase and you’re fluffy beret and sit yourself down on the 96 tram (if you can find room).

“We don’t have much space here, as you can see, our schools are full to the overflow.” Spoken as though her precious antique tea-cups might spill and break if another Hawthorn barrister impregnates his russet-haired, slim-thighed secretary. Disaster!

“Xavier wouldn’t know what to do with itself!”

It’s amusing, really—the thing’s that scandalise here. Take heed of the thing’s you simply can’t get away with. No midnight visits to safeway—floppy moccasins and cloud-print pajamas, just for some tim-tam’s and a carton of milk.

“They don’t bat an eyelid at that in the North, can you believe?” But here, like Enid said, it’s simply not done.

So traipse back up through that glorious mecca of cautious consumption to your hatchback parked in the no-standing zone, pay that tiresome ticket and be on your way.

a drop in the stitch

Yesterday, in accordance with my productive intentions for the holidays, I decided to drag out my housemate Leah’s old sewing machine. I was planning to attempt hemming and altering various pieces of ill-fitting clothing I’ve bought at markets and op-shops over the last couple of months. I envisoned myself transforming these drab granny frocks into fabulous vintage pieces with a few raised hemlines, pleats and darts. The first thing to do was to thread the sewing machine, which was different from the one my Nan taught me to use several years ago when lived with us. After flipping the machine around and around again to try and figure out exactly which way the thread should go, Tamsin came downstairs and noticed me googling “how to thread Bernina 730 sewing machine”. With the careless ease that only Tamsin has, she looped my thread through the appropriate metal protrusions in about three seconds and went on her merry way.

With that done, I realised I had no idea how to go about taking up a hem. Overlocking? Invisible thread? Blind-hem stitch? In search of an easy answer I took off down to the Cambwerwell sewing centre on Burke Road. I must have walked past hundreds of times and never given it a second glance, but it was a beacon of light waiting to receive me in yesterdays bleak winter fog. Well, not quite actually. It was clear from the second I walked in that this was a place for serious sewers. The whole shop screamed “hardcore”, from the dozens of digital new-fangled machines blinking and purring at me to the stern middle aged assistant in a cable knit jumper that approached me upon entry.
“Can I help you?” The mandatory greeting.
“Yes, hi. I’m wanting to alter a couple of dresses and take up some hem’s on my old sewing machine and I was just wondering how to – er – go about that.”
A knowing sigh emanated from the man I addressed. Tall, slightly stooped with white hair—he was probably in his late sixties with a lifetime of tailoring and dressmaking experience, and little patience for clueless teenagers who thought stiching up material would be as easy as breathing.
“What kind of machine do you have?”
“It’s uh, a B…
“Bernina?”
“Yes. Bernina 730.” I said with releif.
He laughed. “God. That certainly is an old one.”
“It has about twenty different stich settings, I’m not sure if there’s a blind hemming one.”
Another sigh. “Do you know how to take up a hem?” He looked at me with the patronizing expression I sometimes use on mother’s who insist on buying their children shoes three sizes too big. Do you have any idea what on earth you’re doing? Was the unmistakable subtext.
“Er- well, not exactly, I haven’t sewn in a while.” That was certainly clear enough.
He proceeded to demonstrate with a scrap of material how to go about doing a blind hem.
“It’s all in the fold.” Another tired glance. “You need to have a bit of experience though. It’s not something you can just do in five seconds.”
I nodded. “Ok, well, maybe I can just do an ordinary hem with invisible stiching. Do you have that transparent thread stuff?”
“We do, but it’s not invisible. You can still see it on dark colours. And as you can see, it’s a bit of money.” He held up the product, a reel of thread that looked to me exactly like fishing line, with a price sticker reading $13.99. I balked.
“Maybe I’ll just get coloured thread to match the clothes instead.” I said.
He nodded. “Yes, but you’ll need the material to match the colours up.”
“Oh, I’ve got the colours in my head,” I answered confidently.
The old man laughed again. “You must have a pretty good head.”
I stumbled over some rolls of material and frantically scanned the rows of brightly coloured poly-cotton, quickly realising my head definitely wasn’t good enough to pick the right shade of grey for the tunic I had planned to start with.
“It’s best to get a shade darker than the garment, so it blends in.” A voice offered helpfully from behind me. The woman at the counter, glasses hanging from a yellowing gold chain, peered over at me.
“Thanks.” I snatched at a couple of charcoal reels. Turning to pay, I realised I had no cash and that this place would probably have a ten dollar eftpos minimum. At the counter, I spied some vintage-looking tins about the size of a deck of playing cards.
“These are gorgeous!” I opened one up. “Wow, they’ve got everything inside.” A tiny pair of scissors, a thimble, tape measure, pins, a stich ripper, needles and thread fit neatly inside.
“Oh, they’re just little emergency kits.” The woman commented, “to keep in your handbag.
“Oh. So they’re not for proper sewing.”
She chuckled. “Definitely not. You certainly need something more substantial than that.”
I put the tin down, deciding the twenty dollar investment for an insubstantial emergency kit wasn’t what I was there for. I settled on a five dollar pin-cushion that looked like a tomato to make up the rest of the money.
“Thanks a lot.” I nodded at the man who has assisted me, who was now deep in conversation with another customer discussing the merits of the new Singer machine, and hurried out into the cold street.

Back at home, I stuck a few odd pins sitting on my windowsill into the tomato and put it next to my corkboard. The reels of cotton I bought are still in the bottom of my bag somewhere. Who needs shorter hems in winter anyway?

Op-shop musings

I once read an article about an Arts student writing a PhD. on ‘Op-shop culture’. My first reaction was a mixture of ‘what the hell? that’s ridiculous’ and ‘wow, that’s totally cool’. Yesterday, while browsing the book section at the Camberwell Salvo’s I was struck by a sudden interest why certain books and authors repetitively turn up on op-shop shelves. You know the ones I’m talking about. You can walk into just about any op-shop and there will be at least a faithful few by John Grisham, Bryce Courtney, Mauve Binchy, Jackie Collins, Tom Clancy and Sidney Sheldon. These are nothing more than names to me – I’ve never read a single novel written by any of the authors. And yet they’re always there, which means that they’ve at least had the success of being bought, read and discarded (well, hopefully read).

At your standard op-shop, you can also usually find at least one copy of Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes and sometimes two or three of the sequal ‘Tis. Let’s not forget about Helen Fielding; thought I seldom see Bridget Jones’s Diary there seem to be a ridiculous amount of unwanted copies of it’s follow on The Edge of Reason. And certainly The Davinci Code is becoming more and more frequent, interspersed with the occasional novels of Tim Winton, Jane Green and Anita Shreve. So does the fact that these titles can be so frequently found in secondhand stores mean that they are bad books written by bad writers? Or maybe they are simply popular titles that are readily available, easy reading and have thus become high-turnover kind of novels. Also, alot of the aforementioned authors seem to write in high-volume. They’re like the adult Baby-sitters Club or Enid Blyton’s, they make for pleasant reading, but once you’ve read one, you’ve read them all. They’re not old enough to be classics worth hanging on to and not compelling enough to warrant a second reading either.

Regardless, I have certainly picked up my fair share of titles from suburban op-shops, including To Kill a Mockingbird which is one of my favorite books of all time, and various other enjoyable classics. So, if you are prepared to face the barrage of novels by Barbara Taylor Bradford, there are definitely gems to be found.