LOST HAT

It’s not as if I was particularly fond of it or anything like that.

It wasn’t even all that sartorially elegant, if I’m being brutally honest.

In fact, it was precisely because I was told that it made me look “strange” that I took it off and threw it into the back of the car in the first place, but there you go.

I do hate losing things, and ever since that petulant moment, I’ve not seen the thing since, even though I have the vaguest of recollections of having it on my head as I public-spiritedly (and – I think - unobserved by any of my neighbours) cleared the ice off the stone steps which lead up to all of our battered little houses.

The price you have to pay for doing someone a good turn, eh…?

It was, however, useful, and it did come in handy on more than one chilly occasion if I knew that it was unlikely that anyone significant was likely to run into me, and so it is with some slight regret that I must report the loss of the cheap and silly little fleecy black hat which I was given as a gift from my mother one Christmas several years ago.

I looked at it then and immediately exhaled a rather baffled “Right…” and wondered whether she’d ever actually met me, so it’s not as if it’s ever been a “precious thing” but it was handy to stuff in a coat pocket “just in case” it was needed…

And so it came to pass that just such an occasion manifested itself recently, just as I was gearing myself up for doing some bracing springtime gardening jobs, and the Weather Gods looked upon my plans and laughed heartily before sending a veritable deluge of wintry precipitation to blanket the entire country at perhaps the most unexpected time of the year.

With all the snow and the gales, when I did eventually decide to venture out on that particular Sunday afternoon, I was thoroughly wrapped up in my gloves and overcoat and my “Jeremy Brett” style scarf, which I had finally decided to give a try-out to, along with that very hat, all in a vague attempt to try and keep myself warm as we ventured out for provisions and hospital visiting duties.

Somehow, when we stopped and opened up the boot to grab the shopping bags, the gusts blew, and a programme I’d put aside from some film or play or other we’d attended whipped out from off the back shelf of the car, and headed off across the car park towards the bushes and I set off after it to avoid accusations of littering but, far more importantly, because I wanted to get it back.

At the same moment, I also had a vague feeling that “something else” also flew out, but I wasn’t sure whether it actually had, or indeed, what it might have been, but I’m pretty sure now that it must have been my faithful old hat making a bid for freedom and, perhaps, a more aesthetic head to adorn, instead of spending its days looking like an egg-cosy wrapped around a potato.

Ah well…

I really must learn to let things go, even though I’ve now spent an almost ridiculous amount of time wandering around the house wondering where I might have put it, and checking the various nooks and crannies of the car just in case it ended up somewhere unexpected, but I have finally convinced myself that it’s probably gone forever, just as I’m trying to persuade myself that getting so very worked up over a silly hat that probably cost little more than a pound anyway is a rather ridiculous thing to be doing.

Anyway, I hope that, if someone did find it, it’s keeping their head warm in this currently bitterly cold spell we’re having…

Not that I’d want to pick up and wear some tatty old hat I found lying on the ground, but then I’m lucky enough at the moment not to be in a situation where I might…