Introducing the Machine

This is the machine. And I am the moose. Sorry, this is the Machine, because if any sewing machine deserves a capital letter it's this one. It is a veteran, a survivor; the purveyor of clothing to ungrateful children, a husband and sometimes even the cat. But I'm rushing... let's start at the beginning.

SEWING MACHINE FOR SALE, £100. So went the advert. And it was true. The Machine was for sale. Thirty years of relentless service and it was to be cast aside, replaced by a newer, younger model. The same age as the children it had clothed, now in their thirties, and how many skirts, dresses, trousers made? How many adored, how many rejected, the woeful misinterpretation of an unattainable dream. How many passed on, lovingly, to siblings, nieces, nephews, worn into oblivion, too tired even for the charity shop.

'But...' my mum said. 'Maybe one of the girls would like it.' Girls who had been coutured to their whole lives. Not lifting a finger to turn up their own hems, alter their own waistlines, the niftiest seamstress already at their beck and call. What need had they for the Machine?

Still, the sale was put off. A six month residency in one girls house where it stood no chance against a keen interest in photography. And then a sudden recollection from the other girl. A memory of a bored summer's day, a whirr of machinery and a fleeting moment of triumph, lost and forgotten in the intervening decades. And now, as then, an awakening - not yet curiosity - but mild intrigue. What did the machine look like, out of its cupboard and in the modern world? Did it still make that noise, the noise of childhood? And what invisible clothes were waiting to be made on it - garments to clothe our family, surely, not some random stranger.

Thus the moose acquired the Machine. And a new chapter in both their lives began.