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The reel is empty and is now among our toys for the grandchildren, too precious to be thrown away. It is wood and was made in a mill such as Stott Park Bobbin Mill on the shore of Windermere. High Dam collected water for the water powered machinery later replaced by steam. Trees were coppiced and the wood harvested to provide the raw material for the machinery to cut all sorts of bobbins including the spacers used to keep cast iron downspouts away from the walls of buildings. Orphaned children were brought from Liverpool to work here and I hope that they received some kindness in their new labours. Our reel held thread for a sewing machine and came from the Dewhurst mill at Skipton, now gone with most of our cotton manufacturing industry. A fine bronze memorial shaped like a large bobbin commemorates this history at High Dam but not the world connections with American cotton production and the Slave Trade. Our bobbin connects us with much of human history, a simple tool in so many hands for such an expanse of time and it reminds us also of the transience of experience since plastic has now replaced wood.