Isla held her arms straight out in the hall last Sunday and the sleeves of her coat stopped halfway up her forearms, like a scarecrow who'd been through the wash. "It's fine," she said, which is what she says when it isn't. Alfie, meanwhile, was zipping his coat up and down with great ceremony. The zip pull had come off in the second week of term, and since then he'd been fastening it with a safety pin, which is not a long-term plan.
It was time. October had turned wet and windy, the 8:32 walk was getting darker at the edges, and two coats were overdue. I gave myself a week and a budget of "as little as possible".
Alfie's coat: charity shops, then Vinted
I started with the charity shops on Otley Road on Wednesday, after the Aldi shop. They had nothing in Alfie's size, only an adult gilet that could have doubled as a sleeping bag. So that evening I went back to Vinted, which has done well for us this year. I wanted a coat a size up, because it's a coat and the sleeves can be turned back, and I found a dark green padded one for age 6 to 7, worn for one winter, from a woman in Pudsey. The photos showed the lining, the cuffs and the zip close up, which are the three things I look at first.
It cost £12 all in, and it arrived on Friday in a bag smelling faintly of someone else's fabric softener. I washed it once on a cool programme and it came out fine. The hat was a separate £2.50 from Primark, grey with a bobble. He wore it to bed on Friday night and it was still on at ten to seven the next morning.
Isla's coat: the sale rail
Isla's old coat was a size 8 to 9 from the winter before last, and the zip works but the arms don't. She's nine and tall, and she's the sort of child who grows overnight. I buy shoes to fit and I buy coats with room, because a hood fits a big head and she can wear a thick jumper underneath without anything straining.
On Saturday morning I took her to the sale rail at the back of Next. I'm fond of sale rails, because they're an honest sort of shop: nobody's pretending anything is new. There were nine coats in her size. Seven were pink, one was a sort of mustard that I privately liked and Isla refused to try on, and one was navy, waterproof, with a fleece lining and a hood that stayed put when she shook her head. The tag said £22. I turned it over twice and said the price out loud, to nobody in particular.
Isla put it on in the changing room, zipped it to her chin and said, "I look like I'm going on an expedition." I took that as a yes. It was the only one in the nine that she asked to keep on while we paid.
What happened to the old ones
Isla's outgrown coat has gone to Anaya, Priya's daughter, and will be a good coat for her. Alfie's has no future as a coat because the zip is gone, but the fabric is sound, so it went into the textile bank at the Co-op. I did think for a moment about mending the zip, and then I remembered the last zip I mended, which took forty minutes and a pair of pliers and lasted a fortnight.
I should say neither of these is a miracle. A sale rail is hit and miss, and if the navy coat hadn't been there on Saturday I'd have gone home empty-handed and tried again the week after. Vinted, for all its virtues, is a gamble on somebody else's photography. This time it came off, and I know that next year it might not.
We tested both coats on Sunday with a walk round Beckett Park in a mizzle that lasted the whole hour. Isla said hers was "actually warm". Alfie said nothing at all because he was busy walking through the same puddle on purpose, over and over, to check. I'll take that as a pass.
The sums: £22 for Isla's coat from the Next sale rail, £12 for Alfie's coat on Vinted and £2.50 for his hat, so £36.50 for two coats and a hat.
