‘Ex’ as in has been & ‘spert’ is a drip under pressure.
1 Like
Scroll up,
Just when I thought I knew all the answers, they changed the questions.
2 Likes
Yeah spotted it afterwards, well done you👍
My “career” is because I didnt know what else to do. I went to work for my dad because my schooling went all wrong really. My dad altered clothes for a couple of large chains of dry cleaners when I worked for him and he hated it. When he and my mum left London to live in Norfolk I got a job working in a factory on a sewing machine, it was all I knew how to do. When there I thought there must be something better than this, so started night classes at LCF. When I told my old man I was going in to Savile Row, he was agast. What the hell do you want to do that for?! no one wants bespoke clothes anymore, you can buy a good suit off the peg! He didn’t really like it because it was rarified and that if I stuck at it, I would become more knowledgeable than him. The fact that he didn’t like it filled me with great joy and I persued it with real enthusiasm. Even now when i think of that conversation I get riled. Fucking old cunt! I’m not particularly proud of it but as I got better, I took every opportunity to rub his nose in it.
I’m saying all this because my trade has traditionally been for the lowest of the low. No one looked at it as a career when I started and my dad resented that he had followed his father into it. Indeed, walking into workshops in Savile Row even now is like walking into the bar scene in Star Wars. All sorts of freaks and misfits do it and most of them hate it. The workshops of Savile Row are mostly cesspits of negativity, full of people that feel downtrodden, where violent arguments fuelled by gambling losses, alcohol and drugs are relatively common.
I’ve had lots of ups and downs with it and I could have stayed in a factory, or altering clothes like my old man but its the pursuit of knowledge, getting better at it that has made it into something more like a career. I’ve learnt to love it and actually it makes me happy. I guess mining would be difficult to love, but even the most unlikely things can be a career if you try…
7 Likes
You have skills Ritchie.
I don’t have any great talent. There are hundreds of thousands of people who could do my job.
I could easily be replaced.
I think that is true of most people. I have a job, I don’t hate it and my employer is fair. I can afford to live above subsistence level and I am not in debt. I have been unemployed, and in a poor mental state where I did not think I was employable, I had large debts and could not see a future. Compared to that I am in a great place.
But I don’t have a career 
3 Likes
In many cases we aren’t even aware what we should be asking or even aware that we should be asking questions.
I live in an former mining area, the last pit closed in the early 90s, and a few ex-miners drink in my local, which is actually in an old mining village that’s been swallowed up by the suburbs.
They always say they loved it, it was fucking hard, dangerous toil, but the camaraderie and trust in their mates was what made it. I don’t know if they saw it as a career as such, but a job for life for sure.
1 Like
Must resist…
4 Likes
my paternal Grandfather worked there, hated every minute. In the WW2 he left to be a firefighter in the blitz. After the war he never returned Savile Row. He set himself up making overcoats, and doing alterations - he did ok, he made all the smart clothes for the family…he retired when arthritis meant he couldn’t cut anymore, and when it started destroying his spine, upper back.
1 Like
W8!
Wut?
You mean it’s not all like in “Kingsman”, then?
I has a sad now 
1 Like
Yeah, this sort of thing…
Dom doesn’t talk to Harry because 15 years ago, Harry borrowed a Hanger from Dom, didn’t say thankyou and what’s more hung the jacket he was making on Dom’s end of the rail. Harry, who had actually murdered his wife (true) , would, when drunk, which was frequently, tell us with an evil, contorted face that “I’d gladly do time for that fucker.” One day, from the other room we could all hear a commotion. Somehow the stand-off had kicked into rage, Dom had gone berserk over something trivial, steamed out of the room closely followed by Harry’s shears which bounced off the slamming door. Room full of people, 18 feet from Harry’s board to the door. Jan, who was right next to the door must have been ninety, no teeth, deaf as a post apparently didn’t even notice…
There is one guy, who has worked at most places along Savile Row- a fabulously talented coatmaker. He never sticks anywhere long, basically because he is totally impossible. Rascist, homophobic, misogynist, crazy ego. He spends his entire day snorting, sniffing, coughing and making hawking noises, some sort of nervous tick. I could never work out how he had come to be so extravagantly gifted, how did he learn? Had he always been a complete pig?
There was an old guy (Paddy) who used to work at Kilgour, he was so lovely, he basically lived for the trade and had worked in it all his life. His wife had died sometime before and all he had left was work. He used to shuffle in every day, in clothes that just about held together. He used to fall asleep crossed-legged on his board, needle in hand!
He was a key holder and unlocked in the morning and locked up at the end of the day. One day, late, he locked Ian, the Head Cutter in. He had to climb out of the window to get out. Instead of just forgiving, the next morning he let Paddy have a 20 minute tirade using the filthiest language, went uo to the MD and got the Keys taken away from the old boy. He never came back to work, died that weekend, probably because his heart had been broken and he had nothing left to live for. 
Even now, best part if 20 years later, it brings a tear to my eye…
I could fill a book!
Actually, I could fill a book with stories about Ian the Head Cutter at Kilgour, swivel eyed loon. 
8 Likes
If all else fails
The Dom guy sounds interesting
1 Like
Meatman diaries, all are welcome at Lopwell
3 Likes
Fuck Ian
2 Likes
Amazing talent, a really fantastic craftsman. However, like another southern Italian I’ve known, also Dom funnily enough, a bit of a nutter and the pair of them had moved on from coatmaking to altering finished garments. From here they could play God. Why make things when you can put other peopes work right, crawl up the cutter’s arse and slag off all his other coatmakers?
Dom 1 used to come in to work, totally immaculate and by that I mean, you’d think he was a millionaire. Fabulous clothes, beautiful shoes, etc, etc. When he got to work he’d take it all off and shuffle about in a knackered pair of trousers, all patched up and old sandals. An absolute legend on Savile Row, who would prom up and down the street in his finery every day bitching about all and sundry to anyone he’d meet…
Dom 2 (not in the same company) was a ridiculous hoarder, he had cases full of stuff everywhere and apparently lived on his own in a bedsit, with the rest if his stuff in more cases piled up in his room leaving little room to move. Another very stylish man. He was one of the most poisonous little shits I’ve ever met but wow, he was absolutely brilliant! I learnt loads off him but the guy was a complete liability. I once gave him a job to finish for after lunch as the customer was coming to collect, having been in in the morning. When he arrived, I went downstairs to find Dom in a rage with the jacket completely in pieces "I dont know why you employ these cunts, look at the facings, look at the canvas! THE WHOLE FUCKING THING HAS TO COME APART! " It must be one of those ridiculously stressful things you blot out of your mind because I can’t remember what I said to the customer, who was just about to catch a plane to New York…
Dom 1 is dead now.
Dom 2 is old. He was so notoriously difficult he ran out of places to work and disappeared.
1 Like
You need to write a book Ritchie, you could call it The Needle and the Damage Done.
Or, Collared! Tales from the Fitting Room.
5 Likes
Sock, Frock and 2 Sloping Lapels
3 Likes