Trains, Planes and Pins
To the Editor,
As the festive season approaches, I find myself pondering two of the great mysteries of our time: the annual chaos of the Christmas travel getaway and the baffling shortage of sewing pins currently gripping our nation. While these issues may seem unrelated, I suspect they are as intertwined as the tangled fairy lights I wrestled with last night, only to discover they no longer work.
The Christmas getaway, as we know, involves millions of people simultaneously deciding to travel vast distances in search of relatives they mostly avoid during the rest of the year. Trains are delayed, roads are clogged, and airports descend into scenes reminiscent of a particularly ambitious disaster movie. This year, though, an extra layer of chaos seems to be afoot. Could it be that the lack of sewing pins is somehow to blame?
Hear me out. Sewing pins, humble though they may seem, are the unsung heroes of human civilisation. Without them, hems go unstitched, costumes unravel, and the very fabric of society — both metaphorical and literal — begins to fray. If travellers cannot repair their suitcases or hastily sew the Christmas jumper that Aunt Mildred demands to see, then surely chaos is inevitable. Is this why the M25 is gridlocked? Is this why train station tannoys sound increasingly despondent?
I attempted to solve my own pin-related crisis this week, only to be told by a shop assistant that "global supply chain issues" were to blame. Supply chain issues! What chain is this, I ask? A chain forged in the fires of Mount Doom? Or merely the kind that gets tangled up in the aforementioned fairy lights? Either way, the lack of pins feels emblematic of a deeper malaise.
Perhaps the solution lies in combining these issues. If travellers could somehow pin their journeys together — literally or figuratively — might the chaos be reduced? Imagine trains connected by threads of goodwill, cars stitched into orderly patterns on motorways, or planes taking off in neat, hemmed sequences. Admittedly, this may require a * great many pins* , but desperate times call for desperate measures.
In conclusion, I urge your readers to take stock of their pin collections before embarking on their festive travels. If each of us lends just one pin to a fellow commuter, who knows what miracles might be achieved? And if not, at least we’ll have something sharp to prod ourselves awake during the endless delays.
Yours, with seasonal bewilderment,
Persephone T. Thimble
(Purveyor of Loose Threads and Long Journeys)