Funny how something stay in your mind when age takes away the more important memories. Oh I am eighty four today and time is passing eighty four times faster than when I was one.
There was a Burtons clothes shop in the Parade Sutton Coldfield, it had been there a long time and for some strange reason their seemed to be snooker tables on the top floor of most of these stores.
But the reason I remember the the shop (and written about it before) is that most of these stores had their own resident taylor, and the one in this branch was very special. He was in his late fifties, small and slim with eyes that could instantly assess how to fit a suit or jacked to get the best results from very demanding customers. This was the era of the Teddy Boys, a time when a thin hand stitched collar was a must, trouser had fourteen inch bottoms, many so tight that he fitted zips into the bottom of the trouser legs, This was a time when not everything was made in china but when there were craftsmen in the UK.
He made me several suits, and the most amazing blue blazer with a lovely soft texture and no outside pockets, how I wished I still had it.
When the first company I worked for went into liquidation , my apprenticeship was transferred to BIP Tools next door, a firm that had two hundred toolmakers It was an amazing company and many of the machines in it had been made inhouse, One metal planer so large that the operator could sit on it as it moved up and down, shaping large chunks of metal from a block of steel several metres long. It didn’t go down very well with the management when the toolmaker who was controlling it sat on the cross slide as it was machining and started reading a daily newspaper.
At a time when clothes had just started to change from bland to slightly more innovative I found a blue silk shirt with a diamond pattern that became one of my most cherished possessions. Wish I still had it and the blue Jacket.
Lots of wishes on a Birthday
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