To anyone watching me on my daily cycle into work, my behaviour since the start of this year must seem a bit odd. Intermittently I leap excitedly off my bike to swipe up a soggy shape lying in the path, which is dropped in my bike basket before getting back in the saddle and cycling on. I have become so efficient at this process that I can be off and away almost without slowing the bike.
The reason for this, as is the case with a lot of the eccentric behaviours we see each January, is my New Year’s Resolution. This year I have resolved not to buy any new clothes all year. Obviously there are one or two caveats to this, the main one being that if my pants drawer is destroyed in a localised fire, or nibbled by pants moths, then I reserve the right to go to M&S to replace them. The other caveat is that I’m being a bridesmaid later this year, and it’s probably not appropriate, or acceptable to the bride, to dress two bridesmaids in matching posh frocks and the remaining one in Oxfam. However, other than this it’s charity shops – and preferably no shops – all year.
One item of clothing that I normally buy at this time of year is gloves. As I spend a lot of time cycling, I normally double-glove against the cold. Rain means there is normally a pair or two drying over a radiator, in work, at home or in the pub, I often forget where. Unfortunately I’m not very good at hanging on to my gloves. They fall out of pockets and bounce out of my bike basket, unnoticed. Efforts to hang onto a particularly good pair by attaching a long piece of ribbon which could be threaded through my coat, just left me tangled in ribbon as it caught round my shoulders. I probably average three of four pairs over a winter.
I was already buying gloves from charity shops for reasons of cost; their relatively short spell in my ownership meant that the price-per wear was relatively high.
However, with my newfound focus on reducing clothing waste, I realised that this net exporting of gloves must happen to lots of people in Cambridge. With all of these gloves making a bid for freedom, surely I could just replace my wandering gloves, with those that have wandered out of others’ pockets?
We are of course a cycling city, and my route to work uses a major cycle path along the river Cam. In the first week back at work after Christmas, I collected four different gloves in my basket, including a grey suede fur-lined glove, and a stripy knitted fleece-lined mitten. These are my favourite 'pair.'
I have an almost-pair of black gloves, one with a Nike tick, the other an Adidas logo and a proper pair of purple gloves (which is almost disappointing; I quite like the odd combinations). I also have two leather gloves, one black, one white, which would make a good pair apart from the fact that both are lefties.
Not all gloves were rescued from the gutter, one came from a skip where it seemed that someone had reached in to take some wood (which is what I was doing), and when they took their hand out they left their glove pincered between two boards.
I now have a collection of 12 gloves and growing. The sample size is still small but there are signs that people are more careless with their righties than their lefties, and also that people are more adventurous with their glove colours than I might have predicted.
Of course, if anyone reading this recognises their long lost glove among my burgeoning collection do let me know and I will reunite you!
