When there are holes in your life, darn ’em.

Written in January/February of 2021

Recently, I posted a ‘story’ on my Instagram of a photo of a hole in one of my woollen jumpers, which with my very own hands I had just darned together. This is perhaps a small and incurious moment for many people (sharing this slither of a pastime), but it stirred in me thought and memory beyond the very simple thing I had done.

Darning is a skill that I have had for some years now. It came to me by ways of my grandpa, David Waterstone, who past away in 2014. Small things, out of the many, come to bear after a loved one has died.

One of the many things was a story told by my great uncle Tim in his eulogy to my grandfather at his funeral. He told a story about a cross-country race at Tunbridge Wells, when the two brothers were at school there. Tim was waiting in anticipation for David to come charging across the finish line in first place, as he often did. But his anticipation turned to anxiety when all the other boys came running in, wheezing across the finish line and David was not there to be found among them. Where was David? He finally appeared, in the distance and for some reason limping from a yet unknown injury. But he was determined to finish the race, and he did. He came in last place, but it transpired that during the race he had fallen and had broken his leg. Tim went on to describe how this event was emblematic of the virtues of my grandfather, emphasising his tenacity and fortitude.

This is important to note because it was by these qualities, among the many others, that he was driven to do what he did in his life. Whilst at Cambridge reading English Literature, my grandfather was observed and recruited to join the then obscure Special Air Service (this was in the 1950s). It was my mother who suggested that Grandpa probably learnt the menial skill of darning whilst in the SAS. Is it not the requirement of such a soldier to be self-reliant and independent, so that they are even able to darn their own clothes ?

One of the small things which came to bear after the death of my grandfather was when I was with my grandmother, Sandy, at their home in Bath. We were looking at some of his old clothes (shirts, blazers, ties, shoes and the like) to see if there were any worth passing on to the family before giving the rest away to charity. I was particularly enamoured of his woollen jumpers, which I had seen him wear so often. What struck me was all holes in them that he had darned. They were finger-sized, nabbed or torn on the chest or at the cuffs. They had been so neatly and precisely darned, always with a choice thread, such that the unassuming eye at a passing glance would be unaware of their existence.

When I pointed out these little patches of thread to my grandmother Sandy, she amusingly commented on his habit of repairing his clothes whenever he could. She went to his drawers and collected some other examples; and would you believe it, she was then exhibiting to me his fine cotton socks.

‘Look at these!’ she said as I saw for the first time in my life darned socks. Many of the fixes had been made where the bulbous heel wears most, which is a tricky terrain to stitch owing to the the curvature of the fabric by the imprint of the heel. I marvelled at his surgical expertise, and thought to myself, ‘Gosh, Grandpa darned his socks!’ This is how I discovered the world of darning; and when I was bequeathed some of those woollen jumpers, it was as if I were given much more than bundles of cloth, but artefacts which conveyed within them a purpose and a way of being.

Initially, when I wore his jumpers I gave a diminishing attention to his darns. But entropy frays all things and his jumpers were no exception to this law of physics, and as I wore them they continued to wear and pull apart. I pondered these widening craters, as they came into existence one by one, sticking my fingers through them. By then, I had half-forgotten the legacy of the darned holes.

I asked myself, what should I do with this holed jumper ? Should I just throw it away and buy a new one ? Or, should I put it away and wear a different one ? Then I remembered again all those little darns my grandfather had done and realised that there was only one thing I was destined to do: to darn my own holes.

What does it mean to repair something ? If convenience would have it, in the sense we know of convenience today, then all things that we own, which all eventually succumb to entropy and disintegration, ought to be thrown aside in lieu of their newer replacements.

My favourite of Grandpa’s woollen jumpers. All the repairs are my own.

It occurred to me just before writing this article that when I was a child I wanted what I did not have, and to my repetitive displeasure did not get. But I was a child and I was new to this world, and is it not the work of a child from birth to demand succour and expect all from the world ?

I sympathise with the yester-me. At first, I did not understand why I was not given the things I so hotly desired. But good parentage bestowed upon me an understanding that there are boundaries in the world. By gradually understanding these boundaries, I began to manage my expectations and become more grateful towards the things I had already. The next new and shiny thing became of lesser importance. However, a yearning for something never diminished in me. I can see more clearly now that the angst of my adolescence was in part a frustration due to my changing expectations and values.

With maturity comes a sense of time: the time that has passed and the time that is to come. As we grow up, our sense of the present is evermore beleaguered with these two neighbours of time. To neglect the present is to concentrate on what was in the past, or what might be in the future. It is either to dwell on success, regret or nostalgia, or forebode potential dangers, or hope in expectancy and dream in fantasy. These dwellings of thought all occur in the moment, yet their gaze of attention is often elsewhere, and not directed to the present. If I dedicate myself to repair an object that I have, do I not necessarily bring together the past, present and future into one moment ? In a sort of unity of time ?

In the object I care to repair there is a thought, a memory, which justifies why I am repairing it. There is also an expectation, a hope, that that memory might just continue to exist and is reimagined in the sense of the future. This all occurs in the theatre of the mind and is performed on the stages called Past and Future. When I concentrate on the object of repair they are both held harmoniously in the present. I believe this is a moment of balance in the consciousness, even a momentary relief of existential and temporal tension.

Since my grandmother Sandy is herself is an expert in all things woven, I waited for the next time I would see her to extract her hidden knowledge of darning. I brought before her my favourite of the woollen jumpers I had inherited. I donned it and presented an issue before her with an elbow popping out of a sleeve. I had let the hole fester, so to speak, and its festering had spread. ‘Ah, I see.’ said Sandy, ‘Well, we’ll need to do more than just darn that.’ She was correct, we had to patch it, but first we had to darn it.

We then set about to my instruction. The process is, like most things in life, a simple one. It is complexity that daunts the mind. And remember, Who Darns Weaves. Let us take a woollen jumper with a hole in need of filling.

Firstly, choose an area in the existing structure near the hole in question and thread a couple of doubling-back weaves to anchor your chosen yarn to the wool. Then contain the zone of corruption by weaving the yarn around the hole. This will abate any further festering of the hole by adding more structure to the existing wool – you can do this as many times as you see fit.

Secondly, observe the pattern of the existing structure of the wool and note where the parallel lines lie. With these parallel lines you are going to weave a hashed quadrilateral over the hole within the existing structure. Begin weaving the yarn outside hole along the vector of your observed parallel lines. When you are passed the hole, go on a little further into the wool and then turn around and go back in the opposite direction. You will eventually meet the abyss of the hole, but fear not, you will not be looking into that abyss for much longer. Remember, Caesar bridged the Rhine in ten days!

Bridge the yarn across the hole to reach the other side and continue weaving – without tightening too much as to pinch the structure or misalign the natural pattern of the existing wool. You are trying to create a new swathe of wool across the hole, like sea reclamation by supplanting water with earth, or space with yarn. Repeat this weaving until the entire hole is covered with the new parallel lines of your yarn. Now you can be satisfied that you are about half way to completing the darn. Deus Vult.

The next and final stage of weaves requires a certain delicate eye, so get up close, but not too close as to prick the eye. You are now to repeat the previous process, but in the perpendicular direction. The skill now is to weave the yarn across the hole by going over and under each perpendicular yarn you meet. Every time you come to the other side, turn around and continue in the opposite direction; making sure you are hatching your weave, going over and under, and over and under, trying delicately not to skip across a yarn. If you are successful, making sure you anchor the yarn when you finish, you will have a robust patch where there was once a hole. No abyss.

There are a few things one necessarily needs to darn, other than mere tools and materials. Principally these are: patience, attentiveness, tenacity, care, and perhaps even love.

Patience, for we must not rush, force undue errors and have to retrace our steps. Attentiveness, so we do not cause further, avoidable damage. Tenacity, so that the eye, hand and mind do not become weary of the long task before them. Care, so in reminding ourselves the preciousness of the object we are seeking to repair, we seek also to make the repair beautiful and worthy of the object. And love, why love ?

Must not we have love for the objects we wish to extend life to ? For if we do not have it, then for what purpose do we hold onto the objects around us ? If we exclude love as a motive, as intrinsic to the relationship with the object we wish to repair, then what is left as a motive ? Could it be greed, avarice, envy ? These exemplars of hateful vices covet the material over the immaterial, and are motivated to self-aggrandise the individual to the perceived and relative belittlement of others, and this ultimately shallows the soul. They are conducive, although not necessary, to the habit of simply discarding the things you have for newer, more shiny replacements. But love in contrast, and all its auxiliaries, seeks the immaterial over the material, and motivates only to achieve greater relationships with other souls, and this lightens the soul. Love may use objects as means just as hate may do, but the intention is different and the effects are opposite.

What is the nature of our relationship to the objects we choose to have around us ? What does that say about us, our character ? When I inherited my woollen jumpers, I was not just given heirlooms with darned holes, I was bestowed, as I said before, with a way of being. Because those jumpers were not just tokens of memory or material gains, they were talismans imbued with symbolism, possessing their own guiding natures. I might say they were like bridges, which if I so choose to cross them there may be an inheritance of values on the other side, and with those values revelations of virtues. Grandpa needed not mend the holes of his jumpers or socks, because he had the means to simply buy their replacements, but he chose not to. Why ? Is there something worthwhile in this decision to take the more time-woven path ?

This passing on of a way of being was only ever a potential until I the beholder would receive the intrinsic message and begin to understand it. A certain sentimentality is required before any revelation is witnessed and grasped. For me, it did not come at the moment of the death of my grandfather, nor at his funeral and eulogy, nor even in the reminiscence of his past with my family. Neither did it come at the moment of inheriting his woollen jumpers and the learning of the art of darning. It came whilst actually doing the act of darning.

Darning is truly a mediative state because it centres the mind and dispels the noise of the universe. Furthermore, it holds together those three moments of time I mentioned earlier. Thoughts may wander, they may fly off in tangents, but the gravity of a task like darning will always pull them back. That pull will bring thoughts into orbit, into circles and ellipses; any kind of revolution. Around the singular task of darning thoughts will inevitably become illuminative witnesses to the sparks of light, which are the revelations of the mind, flashing from the centre of the task.

When we observe, naturally we describe, and when we describe we strain our observations through the cloth of all our experiences, expectations and values. We gather our observations and descriptions together like old photographs or books, study them and pay adoring attention to them. We hope in gathering them that our world view is affected for the better. In the strain of the wool with which we darn, we feel confident that something good is happening and our view of things is made all the more clearer.

In seeking to mend the things we hold dear, we are trying to maintain and conserve not just the thing, but ourselves and the world around us. By committing to what I call now a restorative ritual, our mindsets are altered towards an underlying philosophy which values what we already have as opposed to what we do not have. And in realising this, we begin to perceive other domains of life that are similarly of the same process, bearing likewise the same fruit. This is a transformative process where the catalyst is the action (darning), the reaction the mediative thought, and the product the revelation. This is the process of a restorative ritual, and by it we may obtain sudden revelations, however small, however great.

In recognising cousins of the restorative ritual we see that the many menial things we do in life have great purpose. Whether it be maintaining a household by regularly cleaning it, or polishing shoes, reconciling a dispute with an old friend, or just physically exercising to uphold our bodily strength. All of these endeavours, these rituals, demand us to grow, lest these things we are trying to maintain deteriorate, suddenly fall apart and leave us despondent, if not remorseful.

It strikes me that the consequence of acting out a restorative ritual, in any given way, is contentment and even happiness. I know only too well the satisfying feeling when I have completed a task, built something, and then have taken a moment to survey what I have done. It is serotonin, the brain justly congratulating and rewarding itself. Surprisingly, no matter how great or small the ritual is, whether reconciling with a friend or darning a woollen jumper, the effects on the mind are remarkably similar. Which goes to show, that even in doing the seemingly most insignificant restorative ritual, the amassed effect over time may be enormous to our well-being. It is akin to each snowflake that forms the avalanche; the snowflake may represent the habit of darning clothes, and the avalanche the attainment of that long desired vocation. It is the doing of things that we will be ultimately rewarded the most. It is far easier to do what is small and manageable than what is big and cumbersome, and in doing the former the latter is made easier.

I remember listening to Alan Watts many years ago. He spoke of nature as being chaos and order, and when carefully observed at one scale it is chaos and at another order. I find this wonderfully synonymous to the nature of wool and that of darning.

The example he conjured to express his meaning took the form of a microscope. Take a piece of cloth, let us say a woollen one, and notice how to the naked eye it looks smooth and continuous, possessing the character of a plane. But through a microscope, inspect on a different scale that the structure of what you have just seen is now different. Suddenly, weaves of yarn appear showing a different reality altogether – how the impression of the cloth has changed ! Zoom in again and the weaves suddenly disappear. Now bristling into existence are the haywire hairs -how the look of the wool has changed again. Each scale shows a different reality and can be observed in qualitative terms of chaos and order.

As you sit in your chair, the cloth of your woollen jumper is probably rippling over your body like waves over the surface of an ocean, evoking a mixture of chaos yet order. The structure of the yarns under closer inspection become regimented and ordered, but you know now that the threads which form them, when seen closer, are wild and entangled.

Watts describes how these layers are continuous from the smallest magnitude to the largest, stacked upon each other infinitely and forever. These ideas were borne out to me, fresh and yet more developed, simply by ritually darning. For in a moment whilst darning, I behold the universe in a different way and I am satisfied or questioning; if not satisfied questioning. This is what happens to the mind whilst darning, it conjures up past memories, thoughts and associations, like that of Mr Watts. In the chaos and order of experiencing them arises new meanings and understandings.

Fundamentally, darns are structures that delay the inevitable doom of entropy. In temporally abating this doom, by darning woollen jumper, we elongate the path of our an emotional journey with the jumper. Allowing greater and more mature meanings to develop and associate themselves with the jumper. By extending its life we grow ours, not just in time, but more importantly in breadth. And alas, we can even better reconcile in the great fulness of time, that in fact our jumper, which we might have inherited from our grandpa, will too one day be lost.

Ah, how the mind wonders ! All these thoughts just from darning, and to write them down so happily.

In writing all this I have discovered another appreciation for someone I love, my Padre. Over the years, my family and I have incessantly teased him for his hoarding tendencies. How many sheds does a man need ? How many tools of the same kind ? What about used materials like bolts and screws, pieces of plastic foam and lengths of reclaimed wood ?

One of our most cherished and extraordinary stories relating to his tendency is this… Several years ago, the family was in Turkey, Marmaris, at the marina there, having just spent a holiday sailing. A marina is quite the natural habitat for my Padre, for there are so many objects of interest for him to survey and take note (since he is a sailer and a boat builder). On a visit to the marina office, he passed by what we call in Britain a Biffa Bin, a large plastic receptacle for rubbish with a lid. Something caught his attention and he lifted out of the bin an old, paint-flaking, rust-stained, foldable bicycle – which had evidently been thrown away after years of justified use. But to my Padre, somehow, the bicycle looked to have the capacity to wheel out a few more years, if not more. All the bicycle needed, you see, was a some attention and work, then it would function as it always had and be of use to him.

He brought it back to the boat that we were staying on and we all looked at it incredulous. What on earth was he doing with that disabled, beaten and seized bicycle? He thought he could restore it. But how? We were in Turkey and were about to leave. On our return flight, he paid for extra holdall luggage and so folded the bicycle with great effort and brought it home to England.

Our minds were bemused and entertained. For years that dilapidated bicycle has remained in our garden outside, moving about from outside shed to shed in its eternal wait for salvation. It was as if it had come to Britain only to retire and live out its last years in relative comfort at an English home. Every now and then, when a trip to the dump was about to be undertaken, Brother would put the bicycle in the trailer to be taken away finally to its resting place. But when Padre went to the dump, we would discover the bicycle returned to its previous position before one of his sheds. We were not too exasperated by his refusal to take the bicycle away, for its existence gave us great enjoyment and many moments of laughter.

My Padre has always taken our banter so well; and with a knowing smile he deflects our jabs effortlessly. He is like an old sage amongst the taunting young of a village, completely confident in himself, self-possessed and understanding, if not a little charmed by it all. I had never questioned why it was so easy for him to be so accepting and well disposed to all our gibes. But now I question and wonder about all those jests we made, in lieu of all the thoughts I have written and woven above. I have found that I now have begun to understand a little better the behaviour of my Padre, and that of his wisdom.

My Padre has many projects on the go, too many to bring all of them to completion as soon as possible. But why undertake so many ? The bicycle is a revelation to me, for in his adoption of it I see the same kind of attempt in me of the darning of my Grandpa’s old woollen jumper. It is in the rejection of waste and the passing of things before their time. It is in the continuing endeavour of just simply doing something, or in the immediate hope of doing that something. And if I may jump, it is fundamentally a love emanating from our real soulful relations to the inanimate things around us. We love our family and friends, and in so practicing that love, we learn to love the things that do not have souls. We imbued the inanimate things with meaning because they are ours, and because they are ours, they must have worth.

And it must be a circular thing, that the more we learn to care for our loved ones, the more we are able to care for the things we love to possess; and that the more we learn to care for our things, the more we are able to care for those we love.

Darning slots in just there. To me I now hold this skill up as a pure representation of the care I wish to give to life and to those I have in my life. It is a simple process really, but the simplest things often are the most beautiful and most meaningful. It is love which urges on traditions and darning is one of them. It is the intention of doing something like darning which underlies our love to those things we hold most dear. Grandpa, stern though he may have been, understood this, even if he was never able to express it as I am now.

From henceforth, it will always be easier to pick up my needle and thread, because on the inspection I have made hitherto, I now understand more fully the value of the simplest task. When there are holes in our lives we often forget that simplest way to fill them in is by just doing something. In our actions we fill in the void of potential. A darned hole in a jumper is just the physical representation of this idea, and by doing it, it makes the philosophical concept in ones mind true and useful; we are made content. So, I suppose, when there are holes in your life, darn ’em.

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