lost....

Well, I don't know about tears streaming down your face when you lose something you cannot replace... and I don't mean to trivialise Chris Martin's lachrymose lament for Gwyneth's grief for her dead father.... but I lost a hat on Saturday that I can, in fact, easily replace by going online and placing an order for another one.... and I'm still both incredibly annoyed with myself and gutted.

Let's not be melodramatic about it: I'd be lying if I said I was in tears over this... but the whole incident has been regrettable, frustrating and has left me somewhat irritable and on-edge; running in circles, chasing my tail.  Mind you. just because I'm hurting, doesn't mean I'm hurt; doesn't mean I didn't get what I deserved; no better and no worse.  Maybe I'm just tired and under-prepared.

I desperately want a replacement, but I somehow feel as though I shouldn't order a new one until an appropriate period of mourning / time for it to turn up has past.

I lost it on Saturday, so.... if I wait until this Friday, is that long enough?  Oh, I can't help it: I'm just waiting till the shine wears off.

I doubt the replacement will ignite my bones, exactly, but it will neatly fill the little hole that has developed in my life and will certainly get me something that I want but don't need.  I'll even go as far as to say that, when the new one arrives, I promise I will learn from my mistakes and be more careful in future not to leave anything behind in the cinema/gym/other unknown location (possibly including my own house) again.

I really liked that damn hat.  Without it I'm like a puzzle and I can't find my missing piece.

This is exactly the kind of thing Chris Martin has in mind when he's writing his lyrics, right?  Some kind of big, vague emotional drama.... like losing a hat.

Yeah?

(and no, it wasn't so much all yellow as a grey tweed in colour).

***further hat news ***

Without my hat, and even in this atrocious weather, I managed to get a sunburned head yesterday.  Half an hour yesterday afternoon watching a charity 5-a-side tournament and this morning I'm distinctly pink around the edges.  I realise this is as much a comment on my hairline as it is on my hat status.... but it is mostly why I have hats in the first place.....

Tsk.  As you were.

hell of a hat....

On 7th July 2008, I ordered a hat.

On 20th December 2010, that hat finally turned up.

There's a perfectly logical explanation for this: it's a 100% beaver felt hat that has been handmade by a craftsman in Germany.  The craftsman makes hats for love and in his spare time away from his paying job and his family.  It's a long, slow process that involves many hours of painstaking labour, and each hat is a labour of love.

.....So I waited nearly two-and-a-half years for a hat.

And it's arrived.

And, to be honest, it looks a lot like my existing fedora:

...but trust me, it feels completely different.  My Akubra is a great hat, but comparatively speaking, it's as stiff as a board.  The new hat - an Adventurebilt Deluxe - is as soft as butter.  It's also darker in colour and quite a lot higher in the crown.  As beaver felt (as opposed to rabbit), it should also be incredibly durable and waterproof, the higher production standards notwithstanding.

I like it.

It's got a tiny little wrinkle on the brim at the front of the hat, where I think the hat has been clamped as the felt has been sanded down until it is smooth.  It's a tiny little defect, but one that shows that this has been hand rather than factory-made. 

Now I just need to wear it and resist the temptation to wrap the hat up in cotton wool when it has been built to withstand a battering.

In other hat news........

....you might remember that Cody Bones and I made a little wager about the outcome of the Ryder Cup back in October.  The prize for the winner was a hat.  I won.  Cody, gentleman that he is, sent me two hats.  In return, I promised him that I would post up pictures of the hats.  Well, I've had the hats for a while, so this is probably long overdue.

C. modelling a lovely Chicago Cubs hat, seamlessly adding another team of losers to my already extensive list that includes Wolverhampton Wanderers and Northamptonshire County Cricket Club (my rugby team - Northampton Saints - are, to be fair, top of the league at the moment and flying in European competition, so.....)

and....

This one's a real beauty: the actual hat that Cody used to wear when he played golf.  All the way from Timberstone, Michigan.

Cody, you are a scholar and a gentleman.  I only hope you like the hats I sent you half as much.

...And later this month, I hope to be able to display an orange trucking hat from a Canadian lumber company.... the gift of a friend from New York who owes me a hat.  It really doesn't get any better than that.

You can never have too many hats, right?  Not with my hairline.

you can leave your hat on....

It's been an extremely dull day at work - the worst by far since my return a couple of weeks ago - but it was all made a little more tolerable after I received word this morning that the hat I ordered on 7th July 2008 was next in line to be made by the hatmaker. 

This is, of course, excellent news.  I like hats.

I'm never usually one for delayed gratification, but the hat is, you see, a 100% handmade, 100% beaver felt fedora made to the most exacting standards (just how exacting you can read here), and I knew when I ordered it that the wait would be at least 18 months....but as it was being custom-made by a master craftsman in Germany, this seemed like a relatively small price to pay.  As did the actual price itself, which was a bit more than double what I paid for my existing - machine made, rabbit felt - hat.  Considering the amount of additional effort and the superior quality of the materials being used, it wasn't cheap, but on the whole I didn't feel that the price was unreasonable for what I was getting. 

As things have turned out, I'm going to have waited well over two years before I finally get my hands on this hat.  In the meantime, the pound has collapsed against the Euro and the hatmaker has increased his prices significantly (he has more demand than he knows what to do with, so almost doubling the price was the only way he could think of to keep the waiting list at a manageable level).  In real terms, the hat I'm getting (and paid for in advance) is now probably worth nearly 3 times what I paid for it back in 2008.  Not that it matters much, as I'm more interested in wearing it than I am in its theoretical value as an investment.  Besides, I've been collecting £1 and £2 coins in a terramundi pot since I first placed the order, and there's a good chance that there's already enough in there to cover the cost.

Yay!

After more than two years wait, to be honest I'm mainly just looking forward to the day when this almost mythical hat actually turns up.  I've loved wearing my existing fedora around the world, and I can only hope that the new one accumulates anywhere near as many miles on my head. 

What does it look like?  Um, same same, but you can never have too much of a good thing, right?  Or, indeed, too many hats generally.

Not with my hairline, anyway.....