Alfie came out of the school gate on Tuesday with the left knee of his trousers hanging off like a trapdoor and a grin you couldn't have bought. 'I was goalie,' he said, as if that explained everything, and I suppose it does. He dives. He has dived since January, on a playground that is mostly tarmac with a painted line on it, and his knees are paying for every one.
Four pairs in August, and what happened to them
Alfie started Year 1 in September with four pairs of grey trousers off the August uniform list: a two-pack of Tesco F&F reinforced-knee trousers at £7 and a two-pack from George at £6. The George pairs went first, both through at the left knee by the end of the autumn term, which is probably a lot to ask of £3 trousers and a boy who dives. The F&F pairs kept their knees thanks to the double layer, but one split along the back seam from sliding down the bank at the edge of the field on his bottom.
In January I bought a two-pack of Sainsbury's Tu trousers with reinforced knees for £8. In March I found two more pairs on Vinted for £5.60 together, almost unworn, from a boy who I suspect did not play football. So by Easter, the ones still standing were the surviving F&F pair, the two Tu pairs and the Vinted pair. None of the George ones made it.
I can't tell you it's the brand. It might be the cut, or the particular bank, or the fact that Alfie goes at things the way a labrador goes at a ball. All I know is that the double layer helped more than anything else.
The patches
For the pairs that weren't past saving I bought a pack of six iron-on patches from the haberdashery stall in Kirkgate Market, £2.50. Two of the six were exactly the right grey, and the other four were a charcoal that looked like a mistake. I ironed them on the inside, under a tea towel, for a count of forty. They survived a wash and then peeled at the corners, because I'd put a muddy pair through Cotton 60 for the sake of the mud, which the instructions on the packet had asked me not to do.
So Linda took the trousers to Bramley and stitched round the edges of every patch on her machine. An afternoon, four pairs, two cups of tea and a short lecture on thread. Since then they've been through everything, including the week Alfie decided the best way to go down a slide was on his knees.
Priya, whose Zain is every bit as hard on knees, gave me the best tip of the year at the gate: iron the patch on the inside before the hole appears. I tried it on a Tu pair in February, and that pair is still going now with no sign of a thread out of place. I've now done it to the second pair as well, and I feel quietly clever.
Alfie wanted a dinosaur patch. He couldn't have one on the knee, because uniform is grey, so I ironed a small green T-rex inside the waistband where nobody could see it, and told him it was there. He checks every morning. It's the one patch in the house he has inspected personally.
What I'd do next August
- Buy four pairs again, with a double layer at the knee
- Iron patches on the inside of two of them before September, not after Christmas
- Check the knees in the shop, not at the gate
- Keep the patch pack and Linda's number
Over the school year so far, Alfie's trousers have cost £13 in August, £8 in January, £5.60 in March and £2.50 for the patches: £29.10. That's less than I feared when I saw the first hole, and more than I'd like when I remember how many pairs of knees there are in a family. Isla, who is a netball girl rather than a goalie, has had one patch all year, on a pinafore, and thinks the whole thing is undignified.
Alfie has asked whether, if I put a patch on the inside of the other knee as well, he can do a diving save on that side too. I said yes. It seemed only fair to the other knee.
