Coats

Here’s one for my mother (taken in our neighbours' house).   Mum worked in the Coats' laboratory at the Anchor Mill in Paisley before she got married.    The town was one of the centres of the textile world with two enormous mills - Coats alone employed 58,000 people - and before that had a long tradition of smaller scale weaving.   The so-called Paisley Pattern came about as the ancient Kashmiri curved tear drop design became all the rage in Europe and Paisley led the way to incorporate it into its famous shawls first on a handmade then later an industrial basis.   When I visited the Mogul Gardens in Srinagar over thirty years, I was told the inspiration for the original design was the imprint left in the grass by a beautiful princess' tenderly curved hand as she supported herself during a picnic.

In other news I experienced a small frisson when I saw a BBC interview with one of the Al Jazeera journalists out on bail in Cairo.   Towards the end of the interview, here, he sits is the very same seat I used on my last visit to Cairo in the internet cafe formerly known as The Handy Cafe which features in my upcoming book  . . . here.