I’m back to raiding the sewing box for a bit of inspiration tonight. I’ve also learned something new and that is that Dean tape measures are quite desirable if the fact that there are so many of them changing hands on auction/collectors sites is anything to go by! I can’t find any reference to being able to buy a Dean tape measure new so I imagine they have gone the way of all flesh (or at least the way of all British manufacturing). Hmmmm – intrigued I decided to do a bit of poking around and uncorroborated evidence suggests that Edward Dean started making tape measures in the mid-1800s and the company stopped manufacturing at the end of the second world war. This begs the question “how come I’ve got one?” It’s a question to which I have no idea of the answer. I don’t remember acquiring it. I have just always had it. I can only assume it either came from my own Mum’s sewing box or from the inherited junk in the box given to me by my ex-mother-in-law. Either way, it’s pretty old, considerably older than me in fact.

There is something very appealing about the swoosh of a tape measure through your fingers as you make a measurement and the process of rolling it back up when you’ve finished what you’re doing brings a real sense of achievement. Even just doing that funny thing where you tighten it in the ball then let it relax is extremely satisfying. Does anyone else ever gain pleasure from things like this I wonder or is it just a strange manifestation of being a BOB? I do have a real thing about how things feel. OK – I know it without being told – I am certifiably weird.

Since I have been at Uni I have discovered a little known and extremely comforting fact about them. They are among the most reliable measuring implements that it’s possible to find. Forget your fancy Dan electronic gizmos, forget balance scales, forget everything else. The tape measure is it. It doesn’t stretch, it doesn’t deteriorate, in short, if it says you’ve got an inch more round your waistline than you had a year ago, then you’ve got an inch more round your waist than you had a year ago. (Oh dear – that’s just blown my own protestations right out of the water – whoops!)

I suspect that when I die someone will look inside my sewing box and say “Bloody hell, what on earth did that batty old bird keep all of this old rubbish for?” The answer to that question is that they will probably never understand the deep satisfaction this simple thing has delivered to my life. It’s one of those things that cost me nothing at all but has a value beyond its simple use as a tape measure. Let’s face it, I wince at the thought of putting it round my own waist these days, but it’s got a relevance for my world that “they just wouldn’t understand.”