The Guides top is blue, it cost £16, and it came with a diagram showing exactly where each badge goes. I have now looked at that diagram on three Sunday evenings, needle in hand, reading glasses on my nose and Mabel trying to eat the cotton. Nobody warns you that having a Guide in the house involves sewing.
This autumn we've got three clubs on the go, three uniforms to keep track of and one pair of football boots that needs to last. None of it is expensive on its own. But in the first four weeks of term it adds up to more than I'd have guessed, and I'd rather write it down than be surprised.
Guides
Isla moved up from Brownies in the first week of September. The top was £16 and the leader had a list: the unit scarf was free, the promise badge was free, and the first badges came to about £3 for the set. The Brownie sweatshirt that Isla has just given up went to Priya's daughter, Anaya, who has been waiting for it since the summer and wore it to bed the first night. That's one uniform we haven't paid for twice.
The sewing is the part I hadn't planned for. A badge takes me about ten minutes to do properly, and the first evening also involved a thimble I haven't used since 2009. I now do it in front of the telly on Sunday evening, along with the ironing, in a session I've renamed the sewing hour.
Beavers
Alfie's Beavers jumper (£14) was bought in January and is looking tired. The sleeves stop above his wrists, and the badges he's earned since January take up most of one arm. He'll move on to Cubs at eight, which means one more year in this jumper, so for now the sleeves get pushed up and a new one at £14 can wait.
Beavers is mostly free once the jumper is bought. The scarf came from the group, the woggle came in the post, and the badges are a few pounds a time. What I hadn't expected was how much Alfie loves the badge ceremony. He holds each one up to the light and looks at it as if it were gold.
Football
Alfie's Under-7s training is on Saturday mornings on a field near Beckett Park, and he has been looking forward to it since he found out. Most of the kit is cheap but the club asks for a training top, which is £25 and the single most expensive item of the three clubs. He got a boy's size 7-8, which I'm told he'll grow into by spring. The boots were £22 and the shin pads £6. I looked for the boots second-hand first, but the sizes he needs sold within an hour on every app I checked, and in the end I bought them new from a sports shop on a Thursday after work.
The one thing I did buy second-hand was two pairs of football socks on Vinted for £3 together. I've written his initials inside each one with the laundry pen, because football socks all look the same once they've been through the Saturday wash.
His first session was on Saturday 12 September, with fourteen boys, two coaches and a lot of cones. Alfie spent the first ten minutes sitting on the ball, the next ten telling a coach about a dinosaur, and the last twenty running at full speed in a direction that had no connection to the game. He came off the pitch with mud to the knees and said it was the best day of his life. The boots have been knocked clean on the back step every Saturday since.
What it all came to
- Guides top: £16
- Beavers jumper (bought in January): £14
- Football boots: £22
- Shin pads: £6
- Club training top: £25
- Football socks, second-hand: £3
The free things: the Guides promise badge and scarf, the Beavers scarf and woggle, Isla's old Brownie sweatshirt going to Anaya, and a free bib from the club for Alfie's first friendly, which he carried home as if it were a medal.
The sums: £86 for three clubs, of which £14 was bought in January and £3 was second-hand. It isn't the kit that costs the most, though. It's the Sunday evening with a needle.
