Variety Pack with Gifts including, but not limited to, Golden Fleeces

I love writing the blog, notwithstanding the gaps in publication that induce sweats of guilty panic. It's genuinely thrilling, and not a little addictive, to see it now read around the world - this week the stats reveal visitors from the UK (as you might expect), the USA, Japan, Peru, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Italy, the Netherlands, the Ukraine, Hong Kong, Germany, Spain, France and Russia. [BREAKING NEWS!!! BRAZIL x 2 JUST LOGGED IN!!] [told you it was addictive - step away from the Stats].

Our client list is as wonderfully varied - we currently have suits on the go for a director at the BBC; a local plasterer; a globally adored American music star; and the great great grandson of a British Prime Minister (whose name our client bears).

It's still the case that our goal is to design collections but this is where the road has wiggled for now and were it not for the one-off commissions we would have missed the delight of getting to know a fascinating array of individuals. 

Today the writer Jake Arnott (http://www.jakearnott.com/) came to collect his Plus Fours. He is, we now discover, one of David Bowie's favourites. And on the fly cover of his next about-to-be published novel he is wearing Bedlam's "Signor Zoot" suit! He mentioned his promotional schedule today and I added to it by asking if he might like to do a talk at Kennington's Durning Library, saved from closure by my ma and her brolly-waving mates. We like him even more now now as he didn't hesitate for a second in saying he would love to.

Writer of "The Long Firm" and other corkers, Jake Arnott in his herringbone Plus Fours

Not only our clients but the people who provide our materials and help us to create the clothes are as intriguing as they are indispensable. Having succeeded in sourcing the green kersey for the Thin Red Line jacket, our next challenge was to find a red pinstripe - harder than you might think. A gentleman came up from Southampton to the shop and said he had searched high and low for years, YEARS, but that is in what he wanted a suit created.

The mill ring around duly commenced and in the post arrived swatches of red on brown but what we wanted was red on black. And then tucked on a shelf holding hordes of dusty leather bound samples I found a scrap of the Golden Fleece a.k.a. the red pinstripe. On the end of the phone in Yorkshire, Steve told me I must be part of his good luck as earlier in the day all the electrics in his car had gone on the way t' post office and had he been on't motorway, well, who only knows how that story might have ended. I assured him the luck was all mine in finding him hale and hearty and in possession of what I needed.

He sent down a bigger sample of the cloth and our client came up from Southampton again to confirm that was indeed the stuff of his dreams. I called Steve to say luck was multiplying and that he could cut the length. "It'll have to be Monday now," he replied. "Me and Angela are at Blackpool Tower tonight defending our title at the European Ballroom Dancing Championships!"

You will be as ecstatic as I was to learn, come Monday, that they won. And, what is more, due to their inside positioning on the Ballroom scene, all the tail coats on "Strictly Come Dancing" are made from Steve and Angela's cloth.

Golden Fleeces were then flinging themselves at us after that - we went to visit funny old misanthropic Malcolm ("I drive past your shop every day at 7am and you're never open!") at the hide warehouse to get the leather to trim the red pinstripe and only turned a corner to come face to fleece with Mr Wesley's own elusive medium of lifetime's longing: electric blue sheepskin. There was not a blotch or variation in the dying, just uniform perfection.

Look at his little face, a picture of joy

And then I found mine! Shocking pink Mongolian shearling.

I already have a hat in this and you'd be amazed, no you would, how often people ask "Is that your real hair?"

Clothes fit for Heroes

Our "Thin Red Line" jacket has proven to be something of a hit with the ladies, despite having been designed with boys in mind. I have my own eye on the sample, and when my friend from New York and her daughter paid their debut visit to the store they chose it as the Bedlam piece the young lady would most like to own.

The charming debutante from New York City, Miss Anais, the embodiment of youthful daring-do

Before we got to the fitting however, we had something of a mystery challenge on our hands. When we went back to our cloth merchants for more of the fabric they shook their heads and announced we'd had the last bit of that.
"So how fast can you get some more?"
With just a hint of doom, they pronounced, "You'll never get more of that, it was a one-off bit, you'll never see its like again."

My shoulders slumped for a second before I straightened up and took on the challenge. The only clue I had was that Martin described it as "Kersey". My research revealed that Kersey is the fabric traditionally used to make clerical and military outerwear since Medieval times, named for the little village in Suffolk from whence it originated. Now Anne Barclay, who knows a thing or two about fabric and whose lovely women's tailoring we stock, (http://annebarclay.com/) lives just up the road from Kersey and confessed that was news to her. It was woven, so I learnt, to give protection against cold and damp thus if, while on the march for God or country or some other cause, you had perforce to sleep in a ditch you had at least a little comfort round your aching bones.

So I set to Googling and my first call was to a mill in Shropshire where an engaging gentleman told me that in thirty years of weaving cloth he had never heard of Kersey. Crap. Still, we agreed that I would send him a swatch and he would see what he had by any other name that might be a match. Undaunted I dialled on and got to speak to another splendid chap, the top man, Mr James Walker of J. W. Textiles in Mirfield, West Yorkshire (http://www.jwalker.co.uk/). He too asked to see a cutting and pledged to do his best. He told me that he knew of the supremely utilitarian fabric, and that round their way it was used to stand the wet clay on in the pottery mills. Generously he divulged that the Lady Most Likely to have the answer to my quest was Gill Rushton at A.W. Hainsworth, also in Yorkshire, who have been weaving there since 1783 and been the mainstay of the uniforms for the British Army (http://www.hainsworth.co.uk/about-hainsworth/history/).

Within a couple of days I had the samples from the three mills and it was indeed Hainsworth who hit the target. One of our friends who had been following the Great Kersey Hunt, printmaker Squire Trafford Parsons (http://www.traffordparsons.com/), lives but a few miles over hill and dale from Hainsworth and happened to be coming to the big smoke that week. Ever the soul of helpfulness he offered to collect it thus saving us the carriage and this he duly did. It also afforded the occasion for him to present to us this comely consort Mistress Binky Buxotica, of the marvellously feminine creative emporium http://www.pearlsandswine.bigcartel.com/
Here they are, she in my flamenco dress bought from the gypsies in the mountains behind Malaga, with Trafford in Bedlam's Beater's outfit of finest Yorkshire cloth:

Ey Up and Olé!

Now it was all perfectly fitting that we found our quarry in Yorkshire of course, having done the pieces recently for exhibition at the Mansion House for the current Lord Mayor, Yorkshireman David Wootton. As it transpired, we had arranged to rendez-vous with his good Lady, Liz Wootton, in order to introduce her to the incomparable fabric merchants Philip and Martin, and we gathered there last week to do just that. Shining like a beacon in the cold warehouse was a vivid bolt of scarlet cloth resonant with elegant authority. It was, no less, the very fabric woven by Hainsworth from which they make the uniforms of the guards at Buckingham Palace:

Philip Pittack of Crescent Trading with Mr Wesley and Liz Wootton, Lady Mayoress of the City of London

We took a couple of meters of that so I might reproduce one of my favourite pieces - the National Anthem skirt, in time for Her Majesty's Diamond Jubilee Celebrations. It is shameful how often people say to us "Isn't that Boris??" when we mention the Lord Mayor, confusing the honorary position of Lord Mayor of the City of London with the political office of Mayor of London. The latest election for that latter post is now imminent and a couple of weeks back I accompanied my beloved godmother Elisabeth Ratiu to St. James' Church on Piccadilly to see the main four candidates - Blue Boris, Red Ken, Green Jenny and in pink shirt and tie, the Lib Dem candidate Brian Paddick (http://www.brianpaddick.com/asaferlondon) - be grilled by the god squad.

The panel was as good tempered and generous of spirit as any such I have seen but the congregation became decidedly rowdy and on occasion quite rude. When they passed the mic amongst the pews I risked my nerves to ask - as "small business person from the Oval" - how it can be possible that the FOURTH Tesco within quarter of a mile of our shop is about to open. When the panel had to respond Brian Paddick said he wished to address “the lovely lady from Stockwell.”  Recently, in an interview in ES magazine, Mr Paddick revealed how he wanted to make a t-shirt so that when he was in the gym changing room wearing one sock and little else people wouldn’t keep coming up and start talking about bin collection (or whatever) - http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/lifestyle/esmagazine/10-minutes-withbrian-paddick-7603840.html
So bowled over was I by his compliment that Mr Wesley made it for him (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ocean-Colour-Screen/278506662215575) and here is the delectable and eminently electable Mr Paddick at the shop to collect it:

Mr Wesley with Lib Dem candidate for Mayor of London Brian Paddick

But back to the Thin Red Line to close. In a blog last month I explained the origin of that phrase and if you clicked through to the Hainsworth website link above you will have read, "The scarlet cloth for the War Office had long been an important product for Hainsworth, but at the end of the 19th century demand for bright, distinctive combat wear plummeted when the increasing use of rifles and artillery in the Boer War led to a demand for a more protective colouring for army cloth."
Now, in the oddly holistic (?) way that brings about the thematic structure (?!) of these postings, I happened to be typing up the epilogue for the third and final volume of my father's memoirs, written in reverse order. And this consisted of the letters of his great uncle Alfred to his adored sister Alice Bond, my great grandmother, from the front at the Boer War. Known as "the last of the Gentlemen’s Wars" it was sandwiched between the Crimean and the First World Wars, and, my pa concurred with Hainsworth, was the conflict "in which the famous scarlet tunic and white cross belts of the British infantry gave place to the camouflage of khaki, making it more difficult for the expert Boer marksmen, armed with Mauser rifles, to hit their target."
There follows some extracts from his letters, written in pencil on now nicotine coloured paper. Mr Wesley felt a cigarette smoker's bond across the years with Alfred and declared he will design a t-shirt in his honour. And so we have travelled with the fabric through the centuries, via Alfred and his comrades to the young lady of New York City who, we hope, will find the jacket offers her some protection as she finds her way on the field of modern life.

8 Dec 1899

Dear Alice,

I expect you read in the papers about the battle. Our regiment had no joke.  It was a bit tight to see the wounded. I had the job to carry some as the stretcher-bearers could not get up in the firing line. One chap had a wound in his leg and he died through loss of blood. Of course, we had several killed beside him but we did not half make the Boers run. We captured horses and a lot of meat and treacle and several other things. But we had to retire as the day went on as we were fairly outnumbered – 7000 Boers against 2000 of us. But we killed such a lot of them I got the cramp looking at them. Well Alice, they are a dirty looking lot, dressed like a lot of tramps.
When we charged up the hill at them at daybreak one of them shouted “Halt, who goes there” (he was an Englishman – they have a lot of English fighting for them) and before he had time to get an answer he had about ten of our bayonets sticking through his ribs. He gave a couple of groans, handed over his dinner and fell back dead. I went down his pockets to see if he had any money but he did not have any. Well Alice, we were firing at each other all day and I found myself behind a big rock – about the size of the Latchmere [a famous public house in Battersea] – with bullets and shells flying around us. Well Alice, it is a fact, while they were firing we were advancing up to them, singing for old times sake.
I am on outpost duty with my company. Things are a bit rough here. If you could get a box of Woodbine fags and send them to me I would be very pleased.

***

1 January 1900

My dear Alice,

Very pleased to receive your kind and welcome letter… We have had another couple of fights and you would laugh to see us ducking our heads when the Boers start shelling us. It is a bit tight to see all our killed and wounded being carried away. We don’t know how many of the Boers we kill as they take them away.
The grub we get is a bit thick, so if you have got a couple of spare bones to give away you might think of me.
Did you see in the papers about one of our officers being shot? Well, he had just taken myself and another chap around a hill and was taking two more around when he and one of the others got killed. So you see, I had a very narrow escape.
We are getting a lot of our wounded back. If they get shot through the arm or the leg without the bullet touching the bone it takes only about three weeks or a month to get better again…
We have only just been back in camp a couple of days after having a good day’s fighting, with no tents and soaking wet through, and it is terribly cold at nights…
Don’t forget the fags.

***

11 February, 1900

Dear Alice,

Many thanks for your letter and box of fags which I received yesterday. We were on the march from Spearmans Hill back to Colenso when I got it. All my chums gathered round to see what was in the parcel and when we saw fags every hair in my head stood up with excitement.
Well Alice old girl, we are having it a bit thick again… especially in our last eight days fighting. On one day we had the most shelling I have seen and it is a wonder I am left to tell the tale. One shell burst right among our post, killing one chap. It broke our Captain’s arm and two ribs and busted his head. I was sitting on the top of a hill we had taken when a shell came over very close. I could hear it coming and it burst just over our heads, the back part falling right through a waterproof sheet that was keeping the sun off me. It fell just between my feet – so you see my day had not yet come.
But it is a treat to see some of the cowards tremble. They say English soldiers have no fear – but if they were out here they would see a few proper big cowards frightened to move. They do make one wild when one is trying to do his best.
Well Alice, we have shifted back to Colenso, the place where we had so many killed and wounded and we believe we are going to try another attack in a day or so. I am looking forward to coming out alright. I am rather lucky. I have seen as much fighting out here as most and I have not been hit yet. But I must not brag about it as there is a lot more to go through…

***

Tutu - Riot in Punk

Back last summer a lady came into the shop and said she had an idea for a t-shirt she'd like us to do. Screen printing tees and sweats is our bread and butter money, through Bedlam's commercial division "Ocean Colour Screen" http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ocean-Colour-Screen/278506662215575. Tutu, as she introduced herself, had been undergoing treatment for breast cancer and had engaged her friend photographer Ashley Savage to document the changes wrought upon her body. Ashley is famous for portraying bodies with scars, tattoos, piercings or in some other way not conforming to conventional notions of "beauty" www.savageskin.co.uk

Tutu wanted to unfluffify breast cancer with a punk terrorist campaign, undo the saccharine pink ribbon that had been hijacked by corporate interests at odds with its creator's true intention.

So using one of Ashley's images of Tutu, Amazonian Valykrie-stylee, defiantly displaying her scar, Mr Wesley started to work on the graphic. It was going to be all about swinging C by the tail. But then Tutu got sick again as the enemy snuck around, attacking her bones next, necessitating a hip replacement. Mr Wesley and I visited her in Guy's Hospital, sat on her bed and larked around. The project stalled while Tutu went into another round of treatment. Eager to see it progress, her friend, writer Stephanie Theobald, took the reins and wrestled the text out of Tutu:
Cancer Sucks
Fight it
Love it
Live it
Survive it

We had the image and the screens were prepared. Stephanie took a prototype for approval to Tutu and production rolled.

Normally we make the shirts, the customer picks them up, off they go and that's that, thank you very much. But this was different. We offered our e-shop as a platform to sell them and Stephanie did some highly effective email-marketing. She and her boyfriend Jake Arnott came to the store and we got to got to know and like them very much - http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/apr/16/bisexual-lesbian-gay-love-jake-arnott-stephanie-theobald We are making Jake some Plus Fours indeed.

Stephanie got an article placed in The Guardian this week -http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/mar/25/cancers-not-pink-women-rebelling?INTCMP=SRCH and another one will follow in Time Out soon, as well as a Radio 4 "Woman's Hour" piece.

Ashley Savage came to visit us, and brought an old club kid cohort of Tutu's, the arrestingly stunning Loz, to model the shirt:

The last few days in London have been flawlessly lovely and sunny as June. Stephanie sent a text at lunch time today (March 28th) to say "She flew". Tutu had taken to the skies. Even though we only knew her a little while, a brief fling, a crazy whirl, it felt like we had lost an old friend. Mr Wesley and I sat outside on our terrace, shared a bottle of wine and treated ourselves to a good lunch, a sensory indulgence, al fresco in her honour. Through her we have met a fabulous array of characters, people we hope to know a good while yet.

Tutu grew up in California. One of my favourite places in the world is the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. I do not know about the etymology of the word “solace” but I notice “Sol”, the sun, within it, so maybe I might propose “the comfort such as warmth and light bestows” and offer this for Tutu and her devoted friends:

Some years back I had a US agent and she told me I should read the book which was the best selling smash of the year - "Eat Pray Love" http://www.elizabethgilbert.com/eatpraylove.htm The title turned me off and I imagined if it sold millions it must perforce be rubbish. It sounded like beach reading. But to show willing I walked into a bookstore on Ventura Boulevard and bought it. And when they saw what I had chosen both the shop assistant and another customer together exclaimed “Well done hurrah!” and announced that it was a truly terrific book. I smiled and thought "Bunch of dippy self-help lemmings".

But their enthusiasm was sincere and not entirely misplaced. The first 200 pages were an absolute joy, even if it went a bit sappy at the end. And for this following insight I shall always thank Ms. Gilbert -

The lost lady protagonist goes to Italy to learn Italian simply because it is the most beautiful language in the world. Unlike other national tongues, Italian was not created by the richest city imposing its dialect on the other regions but rather was chosen to unite the new country, and enable the Florentines to understand the Neapolitans, the Romans to roll with the Lombards, on the merit of its musical poetry: “No other European language has such an artistic pedigree. And perhaps no language was ever more perfectly ordained to express human emotions than this 14th century Florentine Italian, as embellished by one of Western civilisation’s greatest poets.”

For modern Italian is essentially the language of the poet Dante, whose most famous work is “The Divine Comedy”.  And Ms. Gilbert reminds us that, in the last line, when Dante is faced with the vision of God himself, he discovers not an old guy with a beard but rather that: “God is not merely a blinding vision of glorious light but that He is, most of all, ‘L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle...’ The love that moves the sun and the other stars”.

And as the Griffith Observatory illustrates with the most marvellous exhibit, we are formed from the stars. Every element, every  single component in our make up came from a distant star. And so maybe that’s where we go back.
From love we came, to love we return. And now you can buy the t-shirt:

http://earlofbedlam.bigcartel.com/product/punk-cancer-t-shirt
Proceeds will go to touring Ashley's exhibition of photographs of Tutu, which may help people understand the processes of and reactions to cancer.

Down in the engine room Mr Wesley is printing as fast as he can - there has been, understandably, a surge in orders so please be patient if it takes us a few days to fulfil them.

Milepebbles on the Long Haul

Regular readers will know that we have now reached the First Anniversary of opening our little store. "Happy Birthday to us, Happy Birthday to us, Happy Birthday dear Bedlam, Happy Birthday or bust!"

It is a rare occurrence that someone comes in for the first time and doesn't say "How marvellous / wonderful / amazing! It's like an art installation / museum / Sex a.k.a. Seditionaries [Vivienne Westwood & Malcolm McClaren's first shop - we don't necessarily see that, but it's now been said too many times to count. I guess they mean the spirit of it rather than literally? - http://www.viviennewestwood.co.uk/w/the-story/kings-road
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEX_(boutique) ]

Anyway, we're not complaining, it's a subversively fine reference to have. And pleasingly at odds with our courtship by the Establishment, what with the Lord Mayor inviting us to exhibit alongside well-established luminaries and legends. We took two more outfits to the Mansion House to install this week. One of the staff asked if we could please redesign their uniforms (they like ours the best but it would be indiscreet of me to say that). The LM held a banquet last week for three hundred heads of trade, state and government. He exhorted them to admire our work then cited EoB as "a wonderful example of British manufacturing". That made us v v proud. It would be no lie to say that my eyes glistened. We told our respective parents. See all our cloth is British and all our clobber is Made in London - it says so on our new business cards now.

Austin Reed once again generously supplied the lovely shirts and silk ties -
our thanks to Tony Dobbs, manager at the #1 Poultry store

Our new "Thin Red Line" jacket (see history lesson at the bottom of this posting), next to our best seller the tweed "Poacher's Jacket" and matching waistcoat teamed with the Piccalilli Pants

And then, the glitter pink frosting on our birthday cake, that magazine read down all the corridors of power, Beige (http://www.beigeuk.com/  ), ran their feature on us. The model was Bedlam's regular poster boy, Ollie - barman from the Oval Lounge restaurant next door to the shop http://www.ovallounge.co.uk/ He is not only but ALSO drummer in Peggy Sue http://peggywho.com/ , currently on tour in the USA so y'all go check 'em! Here's our double page spread with a lovely piece by the editor, Dean Bright and photos by Claire Lawrie:

Referred to in the article is Mark's old school friend Steve Green, and you can spot his spray-painted canvas of Malcolm McDowell (in Clockwork Orange) over Ollie's shoulder. We have now taken delivery of his new work, Michael Caine, as dressed in another version of the "Thin Red Line", from the film Zulu:

Michael Caine - available to buy in store at £300

The origin of the phrase "Thin Red Line" was the Crimean War - specifically a military action by the red-coated Sutherland Highlanders 93rd Regiment at the Battle of Balaclava on 25 October 1854. Aided by a small force of Royal Marines and some Turkish infantrymen, and led by Sir Colin Campbell, the regiment routed a Russian cavalry charge against all odds. The 93rd's survival was due to the caution of the Russian commander, who believed that such a small infantry force could not hope to withstand a full cavalry charge and so figured it had to be a decoy / trap. Accordingly he ordered his men to disengage. The British press, of course, spun the story to raise morale amongst the public who regarded the war as an unpopular shambles. The Times correspondent, William H. Russell, wrote that he could see nothing between the charging Russians and the British regiment's base of operations but the "thin red streak tipped with a line of steel". The phrase has since come to represent calm British courage... as immortalised in Carry On... Up the Khyber, (directed by my late godfather Gerald Thomas) when Private Jimmy Widdle paints a thin red line across the ground, declaring "They'll never get past this!"

So remember bold Bedlamites, being small and outnumbered is no hindrance to victory!

Waterloo Sunrise, Stockwell Sunset

Tomorrow we nip back to Mansion House to swap out the outfits for two new ones. In the meantime let's show you the fruits of a photo shoot we had along the back streets of Waterloo a few sunny Sundays ago. They were taken by Danny Lowe (http://dannylowe.tumblr.com/page/2), in his final term at the London School of Fashion where he is studying photography. He was introduced to us by his sweet sis Pepe who is at Chelsea College of Art. She originally helped us out with some volunteering, sticking on crystals to production sample t-shirts and generally adding a genetic sheen to the print room (Danny and Pepe's parents are distinguished silk screen printers). This shoot will make up part of Danny's degree project now. It is extremely helpful to us to get images of this calibre and as some sort of pay back we introduced Danny to Jeremy Hackett (http://www.jeremyhackett.com/). Jeremy lives near the shop and says it reminds him of how he started out, with vintage tailoring and luggage. Now Hackett will be lending Danny some of their latest collection to take home to Whitby. So we help each other out, trickle down patronage.

It slips my mind to mention it very often but while the Blog gets the Big Bumper Editions of news, the daily edition comes out on Facebook. If you would "like" our page there you'll be making a helpful contribution to our So' Med' stats. If you have no idea what that means, you'll have to trust me, it matters!
Here's the link: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Earl-of-Bedlam/157642327606726

During the shoot with Danny, I took "behind the scenes". The whole album is on Facebook - and you don't need to sign up to look if you have So' Med' issues:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.332348900136067.71217.157642327606726&type=1

But here's a few of my am-snaps before we get to Danny's pro-prints -

Our early rising was rewarded with a beautiful day

At Danny's back is the King's Head pub where our early rising was rewarded with a Bloody Mary.

We called for reinforcements in the form of Simon, guvnor of the Queen's Head on the Stockwell Road. He jumped on his trusty rusty steed and met us in no time at the King's Head, on Roupell Street, Waterloo (where that Meryl Streep was in the other day, according to our waitress).

Simon of the Queen's Head, Stockwell with Mark in the King's Head, Waterloo

Then off we set in search of locations new, the trollied trunk show trundled on:

Pa Butler kindly supplied clay pipes gathered from his Honourable Company of Tobacco and Pipe Maker dinners, and soon they were packed and smokin':

We can only take so much sunlight and took refuge in a phone box before scuttling into the graffiti arches at Waterloo Station. Then we made a dash for it to Stockwell and Simon's shadowy kingdom, the Queen's Head -

And here's the Real McCoy for ya, a selection from Danny's set:

Disposable Income

"Howlin' F.I.L.T.H. and the Rent Boys" being the coming together of local musical talent to which Simon lends his drumming skills. Lead singer is Larry Love of Alabama 3 and on t-shirt design and production is us!

Now we are one

Blue skies, blossom on the trees last week then icy sleet today. You have to roll with it and put your vest back on. Business, too, is unpredictable and unforgiving. Last month was scarily quiet for us, following a January that saw me knocked off balance by some health stuff (hence the blog hiatus). There are no "statutory sick days", or guaranteed wage, when you are self-employed. I did have half an hour longer in bed one morning but then some minor crisis arose that only I could solve so I got up and got on with it. We work seven days a week, opening Sunday afternoons too if the weather looks to encourage a constitutional. Not throwing a pity party - too much washing up afterwards - but just reminding those who tune in for the gritty docu-drama that we operate with an anorexic safety margin. Rent and rates have to be paid however wobbly you may feel. Prime Minster David Cameron "gifted" small businesses a cut on the rates last summer. Lambeth council said that would stand for a year. Three months later they rose and next month they go up again.

But this month, March, sees the shop's first anniversary and we have made it to that milepebble on the support of the local community (with the occasional guest postcode exception). Last week we received an invitation from local councillors to join a discussion group of Oval businesses and have RSVP'd in the positive. And positively shall we be minded to participate.

The lull in suiting commissions, on the bright side, meant we could concentrate on the four outfits we were invited to create for display at Mansion House, the Lord Mayor's palace in the City of London. You may recall we exhibited there last September, during Fashion Week. This season we sat that out as throwing limited resources at competing for attention with Burberry (http://uk.burberry.com/store/menswear/tailoring/) just seemed silly. But as a result of having danced last time round our name now came up in a meeting scheduled to discuss the new Lord Mayor's commitment, as a proud Yorkshireman, to promoting the wool trade and Yorkshire mills.

Other designers invited to showcase their work in the exhibition that rolls for the year David Wootton holds office include these long-established Titans of tailoring:

 Paul Smith (http://www.paulsmith.co.uk/shop/paul-smith-men-378/category.html);

 Margaret Howell (http://www.margarethowell.co.uk/#/collections/mens-spring-summer-12);

 Anderson & Sheppard (http://www.anderson-sheppard.co.uk/index.html);

 and Hardy Amies (http://hardyamies.com/). 

That's pretty exalted company for raggle-taggle-come-lately-you-know-who! 

Staged by The Campaign for Wool (http://www.campaignforwool.org/), and supported by The Woolmark Company (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsooOyRZB0Q), some cloth has been provided for the others by Savile Row favourites Dormeuil (http://www.dormeuil.com/). Bedlam's bolts of fabric, however, have been generously sponsored ONCE AGAIN by those stalwarts of the merchant class, the Bob & Bing of warp & weft, Philip Pittack & Martin White of Crescent Trading (http://www.crescenttrading.com/). Trading out of a permanently freezing warehouse stacked floor to ceiling with meltons, flannels, tweeds, worsteds and gaberdines - sourced from the last remaining mills in Yorkshire and Scotland - they have devoted their long careers to promoting British cloth. 

Last week then we arrived back at Mansion House to dress the mannequins and were really most touched by the friendly recognition we got from the lovely staff there. Stepping back to admire our work, however, we realised something was missing. Like doh! We had forgotten shirts and ties. So we dashed over to the Austin Reed store across the road at #1 Poultry to try our charm on the store manager Tony Dobbs. To our relief and delight he was instantly enthusiastic and after getting the rubber stamped OK from HQ told us to choose what we needed. Our sincere thanks to them. http://www.austinreed.co.uk/fcp/categorylist/dept/mens-formalshirts

Tony Dobbs, manager at Austin Reed, The Poultry, who got us out of  a pickle like it was no problem at all

Mark redressed the mannequin with a spotted silk tie and contrast collar shirt, generously supplied by Austin Reed

Technically tricky and using almost twice as much cloth as a conventional pinstripe, the plates on our Tectonic suit have shifted on the bias. The electric blue lining gives a jolt of energy. The six- button working cuffs prompt a man to roll up his sleeves and get on with the job (£1300 made-to-measure).

This anti-thorn fabric made with shoot “beaters” in mind will render you immune from snags and problems. Stride through life's undergrowth to emerge unscathed and pristine. Built to last a life time.
(£1200 made-to-measure)

Silk tie and luxury cotton shirt generously supplied by Austin Reed

What we also had time to do was an interesting project for a gentleman wood engraver called Mr Adam Lawrence who lives round the corner from the shop. Here he is demonstrating how you chisel the wood (with a very sharp doo-da) while resting it on a leather pad so that the v sharp doo-da doesn't slip and stab you:

Here (below) is an engraving of cyclamen Mr Lawrence did some years ago. He told us there is a block by the master wood engraver Thomas Bewick in the Newcastle Museum of Printmaking that is considered to have produced 800,000 prints and never got worn down. It was a most marvellous masterclass to have Mr Lawrence come in to tutor us in this fine yet robust art form.

But the reason for his visit is that his pad is a borrowed one, 18th century he thinks, and he wondered if Mr Wesley would try his hand at replicating it. With a piece of leather and some builder's sand he reckoned, somewhat to my surprise I do confess, that we could present him with a fair representation. And so the challenge was taken up.

Emma, the cool new girl at Biddle Sawyer Silks (http://www.biddlesawyersilks.com/), tipped me off that Walter Reginald leather and hide repository in Whitechapel (http://www.walterreginald.com/) would most likely have what we needed. I called them up one afternoon as I was leaving Crescent Trading, thinking I could not be far. The phone was answered with a flurry of bleedin' f'ing this and that before the gruff voice apologised, explaining he was having a vent. "That's quite OK," I said, trying to empathise, "I know how you feel."
"No you don't!" snapped the voice.
Crikey, OK.
"If I could just have your address, I'm on my way."
"We close on the dot at 5pm."
"I'm a few minutes away."
"No you're not," and so it went on until I wondered if I should simply sod them and search elsewhere.
But what a glorious turn out it turned out to be, in sense of mission fulfilled and first impressions overturned. Here are just some of the glorious hides revealed:

Noooo! They flayed Spiderman!

When I walked in the warehouse I heard the same voice barking at someone else. "Are you Ray?" I asked.
"NO, he died, and this is his widow," he said, gesturing at a lady who hurried away. I thought he was  double mean trying to double bluff me so I went yeah yeah and walked on.
The friendly chap trying to help me said some light leather from the economical scrap box would do the job. Malcolm stepped in. When I showed him the mission - Mr Lawrence's wood engraving pad - he said that was made using hide 3mm thick and took over. A mutual respect began to burgeon over our commitment to finding the right thing and doing a job well. Soon he was springing about showing me  all manner of gorgeous skins.

'orrible Malcom my new best friend

Malcolm the Misanthrope then said something guaranteed to win my heart, so rarely is it ever correctly proclaimed. "Is your hair naturally Titian?" My knees crumpled and my eyes shined.
" 'Titian'?! That IS the colour of my hair!" (a lifetime of "ginger" taunts informed the gratitude)
"I used to be a hairdresser," the lovely Malcolm now revealed, "It is the most beautiful of all hair colours."
As we stood suspended in the most precious moment of forging friendship he asked another question.
"Why did you call me 'Ray' when you came in?"
"Well, you were meant to go 'Ray?!' and I was going to go 'Yes, Ray of Sunshine!' because you were so horrible on the phone!"
"Cos Ray DID die and this IS his widow" - gesturing again at the lady who had reappeared. "He was my brother."
Aiiiiii.

Mr Wesley with the beginnings of the wood engraver's pad cut from the bloody massive bit I had to buy.

Mr Wesley made holes around the two 4mm leather pizza bases by banging a big nail.

Then he laced the two halves together with waxed leather cord, with the sand bag in the middle.

He was very proud of the accomplishment, I was very proud of him and Mr Lawrence seemed delighted, going off to make his first print using his brand-new-made-just-like-the-old-style wood engraver's pad.