My Lovely Clothes Repair Lady

[ditchdwellers]

Last year I found a file of mine and my husband's clothes that needed repairs doing to them that was completely out of my capabilities. For example, my husband's old denim jacket had a really frayed collar but the rest of the jacket was in good order and he loved it. Plus he had a lovely thick wollen jumper that had a number of snags and pulls on it that I wasn't sure could be fixed.
A couple of my favourite dresses had tears in them and again I wasn't sure they could be mended.
Then I stumbled across a young local woman who trained in fashion and was taking time out to raise her family. To keep her hand in and earn some money part time she started doing clothes repairs.
I don't know what she does, or how she does it, but each item came back absolutely perfect! And her charges are so reasonable based on buying new things and her skill level.


So over the Christmas period I found some more things that needed mending and she popped in yesterday to pick them up! 
Apparently she's absolutely swamped with work, so if anyone's handy with a needle and thread you could start a repair business! There seem to be very few people just concentrating on clothes repairs, at least in my area anyway.

[Sunny Clouds]

That's a thought.  We used to have a couple of tailors near us and both have closed, albeit well before lockdown.  My strong suspicion was that it was the cost of rent that was a problem.  However, the acceleration of the shift towards closure of lots of high street shops followed by lower rents on some business/trade premises may resurrect stuff like this, prompting greater demand, including demand for smaller home-based services.

[KizzyKazaer]

I think we'll see a lot more people offering a repair service as concern for the environment increases and people really question our throwaway society - can only be a good thing...

[ditchdwellers]

Apologies for being absent and not responding to replies. Cluster headaches have a lot to answer for!
I too think that many more people are thinking about clothes consumption and fast fashion and are more interested in having items repaired and made over to give them a new look and extend the life of the the item at a relatively small cost.
It also paves the way for talented and skilled individuals to set up working from home in this economy where premises overheads are shocking. I can really see this sort of business taking off.

[Sunny Clouds]

(Just about cluster headaches, not tailors...)

I'm grateful to a couple of neighbours for explaining to me about cluster headaches a bit over a year ago.  One mentioned having them and I mentioned how I 'also' used to have migraines when I was younger.  No, I was told, they were different things.

I was puzzled.  Surely 'cluster headache' is a name for 'men's migraines', which is a type of migraine that men are prone to?

A colleague at work in the 1990s had told me about his men's migraines and told me they were also called cluster headaches.  When I was a child, I knew a man who had men's migraines but wasn't given another name for them.

I said this next time we met but was told no, they're not the same, and a woman said she also gets cluster headaches.

I rummaged around online.  Yes, once upon a time they were seen as a type of migraine that were more likely to be experienced by men than by women.

I wonder how many people like me that don't get cluster headaches don't realise that understanding's moved on and they're seen as something separate from migraines?

That being siad, this sort of thing is always weird.  Clinical categorisation and jargon. 

(Analogy with mood-related jargon...)

As a youngster, I understood that I experienced 'manic depression' which was a type of 'depression' where you go high/frantic fighting the depression.  It was only a few years ago now that I realised that this had led to misunderstandings at the turn of the century.  When asked what conditions I had, I was supposed to say "I have bipolar" or maybe "I have manic depression" (I'd never heard of 'bipolar') not "I've had bouts of depression."  You only 'have' depression when you're depressed, you 'have' bipolar even when you're well.  Oh, and unipolar mania is still 'bipolar' but unipolar depression isn't, so you 'have' unipolar mania even when you're not manic, even though you don't 'have' unipolar depression when you're not depressed.

So it's like that with things like cluster headaches.  If, like me, you're stuck in the old jargon, it can be baffling until you look it up or have it explained.

Hang on, got it - is there an even more modern term for cluster headaches?  Oucher's migraines?

On a more serious note, I hope your cluster headache(s) is/are easing today.

[ditchdwellers]

Don't worry about it Sunny!  I've discovered that the world of headaches is many and varied.
I ended up being referred to the Neurological Hospital in London where I am seen by a team specialising in headaches. The neurologist at my local hospital insisted that all my problems were due to taking pain killers and she said that if I wasn't prepared to stop taking them then there wasn't anything further she could do for me. My rheumatologist was furious!
Anyway, on referral to London I ended up being diagnosed with not only cluster headaches, but idiopathic intracranial hypertension, chronic migraines with auras, and ocular migraines. Nothing was said about my pain meds at all.
It's quite a juggling act keeping my head in one piece, and combined with the sleep deprivation from the narcolepsy and associated symptoms and chronic pain life can certainly be interesting at times!


Cluster headaches are by far the worst headaches I experience out of all of them.

[Sunny Clouds]

Ugh, what a painful set of conditions.