Perpetual rain all day today. Continual, driving, incessant damp of the most depressing kind. Surely this was God showing his utmost disappointment at me continually trying to chat up young girls yesterday, there can be no other explanation.
Seeing as I can’t be trusted with umbrellas, loosing them within minutes of ownership, I chose to wear a hat today – a trilby. I own a few hats, but don’t wear them out as much as I might, and this is perhaps due to the fact that a gent in a hat immediately stands out, and whilst I don’t mind going against the grain, you are seen to be quite alternative to wear a nice hat (with a suit, say) these days and that is unfortunate. I don’t mind standing out, with a head as huge and round as mine it’s an inevitable part of life, but more often than not I tend to blend in and a hat can cause unwanted attention.
It’s a shocking damnation on our society that a hat, a simple hat, can cause people to shout something at you over the street (although ironically the members of the UK’s burgeoning underclass who are most likely to shout something will be wearing baseball caps themselves) but that’s the way it is. I don’t mind people shouting at me, and so do sometimes wear a hat, but I have to admit it’s an irregular occurrence.
Hats are great. Look at the 40’s and 50’s… A gent’s suit wasn’t compete without a hat. And the more roguish could express their personality by wearing it at an angle. “Angles are attitude!� said Sinatra, referring to the immaculate way he wore his head gear.
So the hat should be part of every and man and woman’s wardrobe, preferably a selection, but we live in crude, useless times and let’s not forget that it was yours truly that was called, when walking down the street wearing a scarf last winter, a “scarf twat� by a couple of youths. A good hat can be asking for trouble behind enemy lines.
Hats are such an obvious thing to wear, especially in inclement weather, that they will undoubtedly come into fashion again soon, and that will obviously mean wearing a hat will be the work of an idiot. The hat’s time is now, before everyone else catches on. I did enjoy wearing mine today, I enjoy taking it off when entering a building, and I especially enjoy putting it on as I leave one. I enjoy the tricks you can do with your hat, although when I walked into the Lion today and threw it across the room towards the coat pegs and missed horribly any youth passing that did shout “hat twat� would have been perfectly within their rights.
I was standing in the rain outside my building waiting to be picked up by Chris Cairns and my beautiful agent and masseuse Paula this evening when the headlights of their car picked me out and as I climbed in, taking off my hat, Chris said “It’s Inspector Gadget!� You have to be steadfast and confident when you are a gent in a hat, comments will fly in from all directions. Stay firm, you are in the right.
The drive was to Southport for another gig tonight at the Arts Centre. The audience were very quiet, but appreciative, and I was wary as to what I said because very unusually there were two children in the audience, boys of about 10. You can’t really swear too much, or address unsuitable topics in this situation. Although to be honest, any offence is the fault of the parents thinking that a stand-up comedy evening is suitable for ten year olds. The hat wearing idiots.
The gig ended unusually with me unsure what to close on and deciding to do some improvisation. This is a very specific and difficult skill and one I have very little experience in, but in for a penny… I asked the audience to shout out the name of a country, which was “Iraq!� and then a famous Iraqi, which was “Cliff Richard!� I made up this story about how Cliff was born in Iraq, then Prussia, and sent away by his parents to a safer place where he started his pop career but then, having found success, forgot about and abandoned his Iraqi relatives, refusing to acknowledge their existence. It was quite a long story and I found it rewarding and fun to get laughs from it. It’s challenging to make things up as you go along and I might try it again soon although doubtless it will fall on its arse next time.
But Paula was happy enough with this quiet gig, and so I put on my hat and walked off into the rain towards the train station.
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