During the Covid-19 crisis, there has been a persistent ‘bleating’ on the media by people who have not been able to see their elderly loved ones in care homes. This has been an experience many of us have had to put up with for a very long time.

The furore is understandable to some extent, however, the protection of people in care homes has been, surely, paramount to ones own desperation to visit a loved one.

I last physically saw my mother at the beginning of September 2020 when I was duty bod while my sister was holidaying in Greece – sailing. It was my job to settle our mother into a care home…

Due to circumstances beyond control, a pre-Christmas visit was impossible.

It was Covid Syndrome and a a number of falls that ‘did for her’ and it was something I kept quiet about last year when being threatened so abhorrently by a local Benfleet sailor and maligned by others online.

I though, like hundreds of thousands of similarly affected people, did not resort to making a call to the BBC to ‘sob’ into a Radio 4 microphone. No, we have just got on with it and made the most of what technology offered.

Although facetime calls have been enjoyed, it is certainly not the same as an in person visit. So, with changes to the Covid-19 rules around visiting and the ability to stay with family overnight, a little while ago, we booked a visit to both!

It was just so great to see my ol’ mum!

I hadn’t even been inside her care home either, so it was a first for this too – accessing her ‘flat’ via her own door, was quite something…

After the visit, which strangely was ‘allowed’ to last one hour forty-five minutes, we drove on to my sister’s abode. I hadn’t seen her, either, for the same period either!

My sister’s ‘first’ action was to show me a stack of stuff. ‘That’s all yours…’ she said!

One of the items that appeared was a big tool box. It was something I had never had the pleasure of poking around in: when ‘summoned’ to help, I always took my own tools…

Home after the weekend, it was time to begin investigations…

Opening the box up I was hit by an all pervading aroma of tarred hemp. My eyes alighted om a ball of sail twine. I picked it up and sniffed. Yes, but no. It wasn’t that…

I lifted the top drawer out and beneath the Stockholm tar-like aroma was stronger…

Ancient pallet scrapers, a old wood level, chisel and a knife stone met my eyes. Moving some modern boxes of wall hangers and such, my eyes alighted on other familiar objects. A stitching palm…

Sitting next to the little box of goodies was the source of the heady aroma. A ball of tarred seizing twine!

Lifting the box of sewing gear out I began to investigate and spread them on our conservatory table.

A roll of flax sail cloth when opened was found to contain sewing needles and roping needles – a little rusted perhaps!

There were two well ‘run through’ pieces of bees wax. Each length of stitching twin was run through the wax to act as a preservative/lubricant. Now this is something few will now be using or will have ever used.

These were once the tools I was taught to use by my mother fifty years and more ago.

I wondered if the rather ancient palm with its many needle head holes dated back to the time my mother sewed up a mainsail for the May Flower.

Clearly my mother had had all these items since saying goodbye to the barge in 1981/2. I know she always regretted leaving certain items aboard, things that were never used by the new owners then.

This was a WOW.

A BLAST from the past which was something I least expected!