DIAMONDS aren't the only best friend a girl can have. There's another song which puts in the same claim for her sewing machine.

Being of a practical turn of mind, to say nothing of being a careful spender - OK, OK, I'm plain mean - I'd go for the sewing machine every time.

It seems a bit callous to trade in your best friend simply on the grounds that she's not an up-to-date model and because she takes up too much space, but I've just done it. She was a hybrid of a lady anyway, being the walnut-veneered, Queen Anne-style table which marked Singer's centenary in the Fifties but containing the "swing needle" machine necessary to cope with the stretch in new, man-made fibres.

I felt so guilty about the almost-£90 I paid for that machine in the early Seventies that I costed everything I made with it against the bought version. The swinger paid for herself in just two years.

The table's original, black with gold-painted decoration, straight-stitch machine had seen me struggle with school needlework projects, not one of which was ever wearable or even completed. But she'd also been midwife to my late-arriving skills when the need for folk dance costumes saw me make Sir's knee-breeches from half a pattern borrowed from a friend with a husband half a foot taller, plus a lined and fitted waistcoat for me.

After that, the world was my lobster.

And just as well, too, as a few years later I had a tall, skinny toddler who fitted nobody's sizing. Trousers, dresses, skirts and coats emerged from under the flashing needle. So did adult-sized shirts, blouses, skirts and dresses, dressing gowns, curtains, duvet covers and even, one year, my own winter coat. For sheer sense of achievement, there's little to equal starting with a flat length of fabric and ending up with a new outfit.

It's not an innate talent; necessity isn't only the mother of invention, she's also the mother of getting on with it. Now I have a new best friend, tableless and small enough to store in a cupboard. I'll have to see how we get on - and, if you were here last week, I have read the instructions.

Appropriately, as the old table was originally a centenary model, I traded her (and the swinger) in during Singer's 150th anniversary celebration - for a third as much again as her centenary year price. Not just faithless, but mercenary, too!