Today I let an old friend go: a round brown (fake)fur pillbox hat.
It first came into my possession about nineteen years ago, when I was preparing for my 21st – a costume party – and hunting up odd hats in second hand shops for the use of anyone who came without a costume. To my intense surprise, the furry little hat actually fit my remarkably bijou head, and so I kept it and wore it often.
I was wearing it one night as I passed through the centre of Christchurch, returning from an evening theatrical event. It was winter, so I was also wearing my big belted khaki overcoat and sheepskin boots, and as I crossed a largely deserted Cathedral Square en route to the bus station, I heard a distant – and possibly intoxicated – voice cry out, “The Russians are invading!”
The hat must have had a very Russian air to it, because that wasn’t the only time it elicited a Russian identification from a complete stranger.
I have mentioned before the occasion when we went out for a family dinner at a pub where the cook was a flatmate of a member of the family. For those of you who missed the post – or who, like most of us, lack the eidetic memory that has perfect recall of a post read nearly eight years ago – here is the salient section.
INT. PUB KITCHEN. DINNERTIME.
Waiter: (entering) A troupe of Russian folk singers has just walked in!
Chef: Ah, that’ll be my flatmate’s family.
The little brown hat was, I believe, fully responsible for the Russian part of the identification, but I cannot claim credit for the folk singer element. Tact (if not prudence) forbids me speculating on who in the family was. For the record, our ancestry is Mixed British with no Russian or Russian-adjacent ancestors in the blend, and we have never performed as a folk ensemble – in Russian or any other language.
Happy memories. But as I said at the start, today I let the old hat go. It still had plenty of wear in it, but I just wasn’t wearing it – largely because it only fits with my hair down, and these days I always have my hair up.
So I did the decent thing by my old buddy and sent it off to a second hand shop to seek its fortune and further (no doubt Russian-flavoured) adventures. I’d love to know what they will be.