left pocket - The Phillosoph Blog

An amusing little endnote to my previous post.

Last night I walked into my local takeaway. My iPod is hanging around my neck.

“That is exactly what I need!” enthuses one of the staff. “I am always losing my phone.”

“It’s a shoelace.” I explain.

“Where did you get it?”

“Er, my pocket.”

I have to explain that one day my headphones had broke.

The only replacements I had had too short a lead for me to use them and place the iPod in a pocket.

So I had fished a shoelace out of my pocket, tied it into a sort of net around the device and hung it around my neck with another shoelace.

The only later improvement was replacing the second lace with a badge lanyard I had in a drawer.

I end up reaching into my left pocket and demonstrating that I really was the sort of person who walks around with old shoelaces in his pocket.

I explained the technique was very simple, and was actually just a modified bottle hitch or parcel tying method. (even though it looks like my iPod is into Japanese bondage).

I informed the lady there were doubtless lots of websites that could show her the knots, and also lots of interesting decorative knots too (for her phone that is, although that statement is also doubtless true of Japanese bondage too).

She suggested she could use ribbons, and that is a nice idea.

A common piece of advice is to re-lace your boots with paracord. The more thoughtful of you may have wondered about the wisdom of being in a survival situation with unlaced boots!

What is usually omitted is that in an emergency you are supposed to take the cores out of the cord, then re-lace your boots with the empty outer or some of the core cords. This assumes you did not buy the budget cord that doesn’t have particularly good cores!

Re-lacing your boots with paracord isn’t a bad idea. It cannot hurt. One day you may find yourself cold, tired and wet, your numb hands trying to unlace your boots, gut the paracord and then re-lace your boots. That sounds like something you may want to avoid if possible!

In my post on an EDC shopping list, I suggested that you add about two metres/a fathom/an armspan of paracord to your everyday carry (EDC). Or a pair of long, strong bootlaces, whichever you can acquire more easily.

The utility of this was expanded on in one of the links from my 4-4-4-4 article. In the event you missed it:

I had a quick look in the left front pocket of my trousers. The contents were:

One bandanna, various uses.
Disposable lighter, for emergencies.
Two hanks of paracord, roughly two metres. An arm-span and a bit.
A actual length of shoelace. I tend to pick up potentially useful bits of cordage! Useful for stuff that does not require the paracord. There was another shoelace but I used it to make an iPod carrier.
A tubular spectacle safety cord. My habit of acquiring cordage paid off here. What I thought was a bit of shoelace turned out to be something very useful to me. If the situation requires, I can retrieve this from my pocket and add it to my glasses.
A couple of metres of cotton string. Saves the paracord for important jobs. Potentially could be used as tinder.