I am going to have to get a hat as well.
I have got a perfectly good hat, at any rate, I thought I had got a perfectly good hat, but when I dug it out today from its carefully-wrapped place on the top of our wardrobe, it isn’t a good hat at all. It has, somehow, changed colour. It was creamy coloured and lovely, and it has become a dreary, grubby shade of grey.
I do not know how it has gone grey, I thought it was only hair that went grey with age, not hats, but it would appear not. Despite its protective swathings of tissue paper and paper bags, it is no longer the vibrant colour it once was. It is dust-coloured, and mournful, and no longer any use for anything except perhaps a wedding at which I don’t approve of one or more of the participants.
I am not expecting one of those any time soon, unless Lucy falls in love with somebody she has just arrested.
It is a jolly good job I checked it. I am cross about it, because hats are a difficult thing to purchase on Amazon when, like me, you have an extremely large head, almost all of them will be too small. You can get over this by purchasing a thing inexplicably called a Fascinator, which is a pointless sort of hat that has been made to be too small to be of any use whatsoever, it doesn’t either keep your ears warm or the sun out of your eyes, and I don’t want one, which is a nuisance, because they are cheap.
In fact, you will not be surprised to hear that I have discovered that the only hats I like are either monumentally expensive, or alternatively, possibly tasteless. As you know, I can’t really tell about this last, and I have spent quite some time gazing longingly at straw hats bedecked with artificial roses, lace, long ribbons and stuffed birds, before recollecting that although the King will probably not even notice, both my mother and Number One Daughter will notice quite hard, and are unlikely to approve.
Fortunately I had this inspired recollection before I hit Buy It Now. It was difficult to relinquish the stuffed bird. I would have liked that.
Still more fortunately, I have occupied the last couple of days restoring our wardrobes to their state of polished readiness for further outings. Had I not done so, I would never have realised in time that the cream jacket, all-purpose fallback for every event ever, including balls and weddings, sports days and award ceremonies, had acquired a dismally greasy brown mark around its collar.
This was entirely my own fault, having thought, before last week’s summer ball, that I would employ a grim product called Tinted Moisturiser for the evening. Basically this is a brown smeary stuff that you wipe on to your face and which then, theoretically, prevents your nose from glowing scarlet after the third drink.
I have no idea if it worked or not because by then I was having far too good a time to care about my scarlet nose, and by the end of the evening had forgotten all about it in any case.
I did not remember until I discovered it all over the collar of my beautiful cream jacket. I do not know how it got there. I am entirely certain that I did not wipe it all around the back of my neck, but there it was.
I shrieked in horror and scurried downstairs with it, but the dry cleaner was closed by then, so it will have to wait until tomorrow and I will have to beg and plead with him to get it done in time. I do not entirely trust Windermere Dry Cleaner, he shrunk an expensive set of curtains once and then tried to pretend that this often happens with dry cleaning, which we all know is a rascally fib. He was so embarrassed that he has been very careful with everything since, and I make sure that I do not let him forget, by giving him a knowing look every time and saying Now you won’t accidentally wash this, will you?
He had jolly well better not, it is a very useful jacket. I even wore it when I got married myself.
I am going to go away and look at some un-fascinating hats.
PS. I thought you might like to know that Number One Daughter won the Army’s weightlifting competition today. She is now the British Army’s weightlifting champion. It was an exciting event because she had forgotten it was on and only found out when she got to work. She did that last week with a triathlon. If I was in a weightlifting competition or a triathlon it would be haunting my nightmares for weeks beforehand.
I suppose that is why I never am.
