The Modern History of Myself and Hats

February 1997:
When I was ten years old I had this green, felt one with tassels at certain corners. It had cost my parents £20, which I still think is a decent chunk of money. I took it away with me to Italy, on a school trip to the Alps, because that’s why my parents had spent a decent chunk of money on it.
For my parents this trip symbolised a success, in a way, they had worked hard and managed to achieve a better standard of living, for their children, than they had had.
They were certain that ‘I was going to really enjoy it’.
And I did
Until I lost the hat.
I felt like I’d bulldozed my parents’ efforts and that if they too saw the symbol of the hat they might want to cry. From now on I was to appreciate home and its affiliates.
Thanks to that and the fact that Stuart Yorston told me my parents had died in a car crash that night I became homesick.

October 2002:
The next hat I owned cost £2.50 more. It was an old bowler with a red lining. You’d like it- it was very likable, I should know – I liked it. (In hindsight) It represented a time, a place and a nascent frame of mind. The vine of a frame of mind I wind today. There are a couple of photographs of me wearing the hat, there were a couple of photographs and then it had served its purpose. The hat had come to be a confidence for my creative conviction. I had a mop of hair.
But soon I wasn’t so sure,
Since then the hat has had various retirement homes and display cases, though rarely on my head. These days it usually rests; crucified on a novelty, foam raspberry in the living room.

Summer 2005:
The third had been Jo’s hat: a black, corduroy, railway flat cap (cool as fuck). I pinched it off her because it suited me, especially when I wore my maroon polo shirt and an accompanying black tie and when college ended and university began it came with me to Edinburgh. (Jo said I should take it to remind me of her & when our relationship stumbled to a halt she reiterated this. And so it did.).
One night I wore it to work. That night where me & Senior were hosting the quiz and Kristoff gave us a whole bottle of Apple Sourz to drink. Sometime later I couldn’t find the hat.
I was rather disappointed: It suited me.
It was sometime after that, in the same place, I saw the hat once more. This time it was on the head of an Australian lesbian. After thinking about it for a bit I asked her:
‘Excuse me’, I said, ‘where did you find that hat?’
‘Under my bed’, she said. And perhaps she had.

June 2007:
It was the last day with my sweet for a while and after much deliberation in front of a mirror I bought the hat. A straw, slightly panama job from C & A’s in Budapest. It was almost small but suited my mane/mood and ‘too small’’s better than ‘too big’, surely? Anyway Rosie said she found me attractive in it and that helped my decision. After leaving her in that subway I had almost already decided that the hat had to return home on my head so’s Rosie could find me attractive, in the hat once more. By the time I arrived in Kyiv the hat had developed into a symbol, a symbol of my love and my faith in said love, a comfort should homesickness return.
I preserved it from the Ukraine and Moscow to the Trans-Siberian express. Here it perched above my bunk, over the bedside light, placed there, most likely, by The Trader. I remember well, Thom’s hayfever had been playing up and on The Traders’ suggestion we swapped beds, in order to let Thom sleep out of the pollenful breeze. On the third night, (the second on the others’ bed) I awoke to find the hat was missing.
The Hat!
I hunted around, frantically, with my eyes for any sign of straw and there it was peeking out from behind Thom’s arse- crumpled, beaten and no longer an attractive accessory. The Trader attempted to straighten it out and look proud at his hopeless attempts, Thom laughed.