As a wearer of trousers my leg apparel is usually socks or pop socks.   However for most of my time as a minister I have always felt underdressed at a funeral if I wear a trouser suit.   For no inexplicable reason I prefer to wear a skirt suit.   This of course calls for a different type of leg apparel.

Once upon a time my sock drawer was full of tights.   Not very often worn, they were always ready for the moment when they would be needed.   In the last few months however I have found that the numerous pairs of tights have slowly found themselves in the bin, as each pair has either a hole or a ladder has appeared as they are pulled on.

Recently I have even found that sometimes when putting on a pair of brand new tights, they can easily be laddered or ripped even before I’ve got up to move anywhere.   Checking my hands for rough skin or sharp nails I can find nothing that might have caused the flaw to appear.   There have been a couple of occasions recently where I’ve ended up wearing a trouser suit because the tights I’ve had have all ripped, and there is nothing in me that will allow me to wear navy blue tights with a black suit.

Like many women I have a preferred brand, colour and thickness of tights and yet I find myself wondering if in our disposable society the makers of tights don’t make them to last, knowing that the only option will be our return to buy more.

Perhaps I should become more like one of the women from a previous congregation who could not bear to waste a pair of tights.   Instead she darned a pair over and over again, ensuring it lasted for as long as possible.   Her story was one I had the privilege of telling one funeral, and it was in the midst of her story that people who had known her in the pew suddenly gained a fuller understanding of her hoarding and her need to make everything last.    Born in Germany before the Second World War, her experience of the war had led her to value the little she might have at any time and to make good use of what she did have.

In a weekend when we will be marking the losses and scars that war brings about, it is strange that this woman should come to mind.   Only a child when the Nazi party came to power, she was denied education because women were supposed to become the best wives and mothers they could be.   She did her national service in the Bund Deutscher Madel in the year prior to the war beginning, and found that this offered her a freedom she had not had before.   During the war her intelligence shone through and she was involved in technical drawing.   At the close of the war she met her British husband who was part of the peace-keeping forces.   By this time her skill for languages was beginning to show and she had been working as a translator with the US army.

These war time years were not memories she shared with family, but they were years that were to mark the life that she would lead.   They were also memories that in later years on occasion would mean that others found her difficult, and were not always willing to look beyond the surface to try to understand.