On the first day I uncovered an unexpected split in the responses to my darning afternoons, between those I'll call ‘wartime babies’ (visitors who told me they were born in the 1940s and earlier) and others – ‘prosperity babies’ (those who I guessed were born since the 1960s).
Among the ‘wartime babies’, a standard response to my darning was 1) incredulity that I wasn’t using a darning mushroom (the fact that I also didn’t have electricity or mains water seemed to be much less troubling), closely followed by 2) horror at the idea that the future might involve a return to darning and/or clothes that don’t contain nylon (an invention that is evidently held in the highest esteem). There was also, perhaps unsurprisingly, a gender split between the ‘wartime babies’: women were the most appalled by a defence of darning, describing it as “the most uncreative chore”, something accompanied by a mix of tedium and shame. Men generally seemed less familiar with the practice of darning, but acknowledged that they have fewer holes in their socks since the introduction of nylon.