Favourite Jumper

Do you remember your favourite old toy? A moth eaten teddy bear or stuffed dolly perhaps? One you took with you everywhere and one as familiar as apple pie or Mum and Dad and loved just as much? I think all our childhoods are littered with such comfort characters that soon get consigned to memory as we grew older. Well......not strictly true because we simply replace them with adult versions.

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The weather today got increasingly cloudy and progressively more chilly. Right, off with the work garb and on with the warm, cosy clobber. And cosiest and warmest of all my old favourite jumper! Brown, woollen, snug-as-a-bug-in-a-rug warm. Aaaaaaghhhhh. Horror or horrors. A huge hole in the collar beyond mending. How did that happen? The disappointment fires through your heart. It's like an old friend doesn't want to meet any more or an old love is getting married.

Then the shock wears off. Just like when Action Man lost his arm in a dog versus toy battle one Sunday when 007 tried to scale dog mountain and annoyed the sleeping hound who ambushed him leaving him shaken and stirred. You bounce back because you still love the darn thing. Warts and all, parts and no parts, marks and stains. Love is deeper than any flaws. As I write I'm wearing old faithful and somehow we seem closer than ever. I don't see the hole, I feel the warmth and familiarity that time has woven together. It's less sentimental and more sentiment. And maybe that goes for humans too. It's not what we look like it's what we've been through. Together, always together. The flaws are where love has chiselled into our hearts.