Needles and Pins

It’s a little known fact that my first job was working in a sewing factory in Bootle. I started off on a YTS Scheme in 1981 and I believe they paid me the princely sum of £26 per week. Later they took me on full time and increased the wage to around £28, so no matter what I go on to say you can’t deny that they were generous.

People used to smirk when I told them where I worked and ask if it was like Mike Baldwin’s factory on Coronation Street. The characters were slightly less colourful than Vera Duckworth and Ivy Tilsley, and a lot less bolshie. They were mostly nice enough, but there was also a hint of Patti Smith’s Piss Factory – ambition-less women telling me I’d spend my whole life in a sewing factory and never amount to anything. Their only escape was to breed, but then once the kids had started school they’d be back again, running up over-priced evening frocks for women who led the type of life they could only dream about, but had convinced themselves they never wanted in the first place.

My favourite time was always Christmas when they’d spend an entire day planning a trip out for the evening. By the next day the enthusiasm would be replaced my mumbles and lack of eye contact when their husbands had told them they couldn’t go. Or maybe some of them were allowed out for an hour or two so long as they went home and made the tea first. Oh the joys of liberation!

I suppose I learned a fair amount about life while I was there, most of it negative, but figuring out what you definitely don't want is progress along the route to finding out what you do want. And it did teach me how to run up a nice seam.

You see the reason I have commenced on this ramble is that I have spent the last week running up a costume for Ballo in Mascara at the Royal Opera House on Sunday. I am cock-a-hoop with excitement at the prospect of this evening, which looks set to become one of my entertainment highlights of the year. There’s Jonny Woo, Bourgeois and Maurice, Scottee, music from Horse Meat Disco and a great big drag ball at the end organised by Bistrotheque. Have you ever heard of anything more perfect?

It’s the first time in about 20 years that I’ve made any real attempts at dress making, but I’m rather pleased with the results. I don’t want to reveal the outfit just yet, but I’m not dumb enough to try and compete with the drag queens. There’s no glitter, feathers or frills on my ensemble, but I will confess that it’s a Leigh Bowery-inspired creation. I’m not one of the people who get massively excited by Leigh Bowery, but he did come up with some frightfully good looks, so I’m claiming that my outfit is an ‘homage’. This is purely because I consider the phrase ‘rip-off’ to be so ugly.

Come back next week when there shall be photos galore, or better still go and get yourself a ticket...

I should mention that I was eventually sacked from the job at the sewing factory, but I’ve been glad to have been able to put those latent skills to use. I can see myself going on to run up an entire new wardrobe.