This was going to be a coda to the lawnmower post as I thought lawnmowers and hats made a nicely bizarre juxtaposition. However lawnmowers went on a bit and I couldn't be blowed to get onto hats last night; or the following couple of nights as it turns out.
I've long thought that hats are good things. I've even argued that hair could be done away with and we are all issued with a lifetime supply of suitable chapeaux at about age one. I didn't get much of buy in from hairdressers on that one. A hat is a head covering. It may be worn for protection against the elements, for religious reasons, for safety, or as a fashion accessory. Just think of the many marvellous hats that have given such pleasure over the centuries. The cheesecutter for openers.
Protection against the elements is a pretty basic reason to wear a hat and I use four at varying times of the year myself. I wear a golf cap because it has a peak and is essential teeing off on the 10th or 14th much before 0930. It also keeps a bit of the rain off one's glasses should you be stupid enough to play in the rain. I try and avoid this at all times. I would prefer not to wear a golf cap playing golf because a) everyone, lemming like, does it and b) it is very hard to find one that does not give free advertising to someone. A Florida fishing guide hat with huge peak and neck cloth that also covers the ears is de rigeur when gamefishing. Looks ridiculous but who cares? This really is protection from the elements stuff on steroids. A Tilley sailing hat is also used on a regular basis but far from the briney. It is the best hat I have found for sitting on the tractor in mid January as you can also wear ear muffs without disturbing the jaunty rake of the head covering. Reluctantly I add a beany to my list of hats I actually use. I say reluctantly as an offshoot of this is one of the main planks of my argument in banning hats that do not perform a function. I wear a beany to keep my head warm (and I reckon I am in a global minority of one here) about twice a year.
Hats for religious reasons? The Pope has a nice line here but he is just about the only bloke who carries this off with any aplomb. Little skull caps? No thanks. Turbans are worth a look but although they go on and off like a regular hat there is a couple of kilometres of cloth in one of those and they look far too much trouble. I also couldn't grow the luxuriant black beard that you have to use as a chin strap. I don't go in for religion inside my head and I'm not about to start outside either.
Safety. Do I have to? I can see that Lewis Hamilton wearing some sort of safety hat to work is a reasonable plan. I'll grant you riding a motorbike, with a helmet on is quite a good idea. Lumberjacks? Alright. Mountaineers? Not much point really. If you fall off big time wearing a helmet will just make sure that the head that may or not be attached to the broken neck is a bit more cosmetically acceptable. You're still dead. But what I really can't stand is the OSH mandated hard hat. You know the style of thing. A chain link fence around a piece of flat ground that contains a wheel barrow, a shovel, a thermos and a copy of The Friday Flash. There is a bloody great (red usually) notice declaring this a 'Multi Hazard Area' No admittance unless you are wearing a hard hat, safety goggles, a respirator, climbing harness, fire axe, GPS locator, steel toed boots and a letter from your Mum. There is currently one of these 'Multi Hazard Areas' containing a bit of 'Ground under Repair' on the 5th at the Golf Club. Give me a break. The only hazard in this bit of land is the loss of $10 if you can't find your ProV1. And I ain't going looking for a golf ball attired like a member of a SWAT team. Idiots.
Well after a pretty rosy start hats are going down hill at a rate of knots, are they not? And we have only just got onto the fashion bit. In days of yore there were some rippers. The top hat. Blokes used to wear them just to pop down to the dairy. That is if they didn't fancy a jaunty bowler or a fedora. In fact a fedora is a dreadful hat but is worth buying just for its name. If you are a woman of the female persuasion you can go completely burko in the millinery department - especially if you are going to the races. Who was that stupid woman who used to go to Epsom Downs every June with a grand piano or a bowl of fruit or an aquarium or a goat on her head? Mrs Schilling I think. Harmless fun.
But there are a couple of Johnny Come Lately fashion hats that almost bring me to uncharacteristic violence every time I chance upon them. They are worn by youfs generally of the bloke type. They are stupid on a biblical scale and they should all be burnt.
Hat of Hate Number One is the beany with a peak. These are usually knitted out of wool that has been dyed by immersion in sick or diarrhoea; a sort of nondescript browny-yellowy-grey. What, pray tell me, is the point of putting a peak on a woolly hat. You make great progress by cutting the bobble of my youth off but then stuff it up by putting a silly little peak on. Why? If there is a reason of the sun shading variety then this is negated when the peak is placed at a jaunty (sic) angle behid the left ear. Perhaps all these spotty youths that wear this horrible hat have another eye behind their ear. And why do you wear them indoors? God, I hate everything about these hats.
Hat of Hate Number Two. Another derivative; this is an evolution of the golfing cap that I allow myself to wear. There are two deriviative I hate here. The first (and I only dislike this not really hate it) is the 'truckers cap'. This is plastic mesh for the posterior 270º (yellow or red preferred colours) and the front 90º is held rampant by a piece of cardboard stuffed up behind the cloth. The front of this front panel ususally advertises large earth moving machinery. These are just cheap, tacky and nasty.
The derivative I really hate however is the......... well I don't really know what it is called.
We'll start at the victims ears. These will likely be filled with earbud earphones through which to listen to ghastly tuneless music. However the ears are mentioned for another reason. The top third of the ears are covered by the hat. I mean how can you have a cap type hat into which you tuck your ears? We are now into the ghastly body of the chapeau. It is a sort of hemisphere with a coule of inches of linear inferior extension (to cover the ears as previously described). It has no adjsutable bit at the back (you know the bit that female golfers with longish hair put their ponytail through) and so you end up with our plonker wearing a sort of cloth pudding basin. So far so bad. But this is a cap and therefore has to have a peak. This is perfectly flat and the size of a small country. The peak can be orientated to shield the normal eyes (and this is quite common) or it can be swivelled to shield the post auricular eye as per peaked beany. These totally hideous headcoverings are commonly in the colours of American baseball or football teams. Goes with the damned music spewing out of the headphones. That the wearers of the hats wouldn't know a baseball from a pile of wet fish is of no relevance in this copycat cultural nonsense.
I bet there was someone once who thought the cheese cutter was an abomination.
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