An overcoat

A double-breasted navy-blue herringbone overcoat made for my grandfather by WG Jennings, in the early 1950s.  
 
When I inherited it from my father, it was lined with ripped silk-satin that needed repairing; but a local tailor told me no-one made such heavy satin any more.  Stupidly, I replaced it with cotton.  Why didn’t I just patch the silk; and keep patching the silk, again and again and again?  Now, I would.  But the tears were the wear from not one but two dead men, neither of them anonymous.  So the heavy midnight silk went; and I’m sure the tailor used it for quite a price.  

Curiously, people treat me differently when I wear this coat.  Who would notice a old, dark, plain overcoat?  Yet they do; even at 60, with moth-gnawed shoulders and cheap cotton lining, it’s that beautiful.  The wear and tear of age is a beauty all of its own.  

And the ghostly blur at the foot of the photograph?  That’s the person who’ll inherit this next.