My favourite coat, and the lining is a Jimmy Jesus print. The coat came to me sideways. I was still up from the night before, walking through the Northern Quarter, when I found a child’s Barbour jacket, no idea where from, and ended up wearing it around like something out of Nathan Barley. I went into Common for a glass of prosecco and ran into my friend Vicky Clarke, who was off to a relative’s kid’s birthday party with no present. The little Barbour was perfect for the kid, so we swapped: her Welsh tapestry coat for the child’s jacket.
I wore the tapestry coat for years, until the liner finally wore out. Rather than replace it with anything plain, I had the Jimmy Jesus image, the layered religious print, sewn in as the new lining. So from the outside it is a heavy old Welsh tapestry coat, and inside, hidden until you open it, is the print. A coat with a whole night out and a swapped birthday present in its history, and a secret sewn into the back of it.
See also Jimmy Jesus.