Lazy mums like me are being blamed for sending 140-year-old school name tag maker Cash’s into administration. Apparently the latest generation of parents ‘can’t be bothered’ to sew the iconic custom nametapes into their kids’ school uniforms, preferring to scribble on labels with waterproof pens instead.

Although I freely admit I can’t be bothered I find the accusation a tad unfair: who on earth has the time (or the inclination) to fiddle around sewing tiny labels into clothes that will be outgrown in less than six months’ time, however nostalgic it may be?

At the risk of offending my own mum (who has our 1980s Cash’s tags in her sewing basket to this day, pictured) full-time mothers 140 years ago, when nurseries didn’t require every piece of clothing to be clearly labelled and you were talking about a couple of school shirts and a PE kit, that’s who.

Frankly I’m more surprised to discover Cash’s is still in business (albeit just) than I am to find it’s in trouble. Yet it seems there are some die-hard followers of the woven name tag: one of the co-founders of parenting website NetMums was last week quoted as saying that when she spots a woven nametape sewn into the uniforms of her children’s friends ‘it is like a sign that says ‘perfect mum’.’

In that case I’d rather be an imperfect mum. Give me a waterproof pen that slowly bleeds BB’s name into a big black illegible mess across the labels of her clothes any day.

At least her nursery knows exactly who they belong to.

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