Red Lamé

2023, eh?  That happened.  The last quarter of it decided to be the Moriarty to my Holmes and tried to rugby tackle me over the Reichenbach Falls.  The joke’s on 2023, it’s dead at midnight and I’m (hopefully) not.  ‘

We’re staying in.  I’m not physically or temperamentally disposed to wander far tonight.  The weather seems to be set to shit.  I got damp enough just putting the bins out earlier.  Dampest New Year I can remember since the Millenium.  That was a quagmire.  I spent more of New Year 1999 drip-drying over the pub buffet than carousing. 

And I turned up in the same red lamé shirt as my friend Matthew, which was annoying.  Mine was clinging, damp, to my not inconsiderable chest.  His wasn’t.  To his chest, I mean.  Nor mine.  I should clarify: his red lamé shirt wasn’t damp or clinging to anyone’s chest on New Year’s Eve 1999.  Not to my knowledge, anyway. 

I can honestly say I’m not wearing a scrap of red lamé as I type.  My red lamé days are behind me.  In total I think I’ve only had two red lamé days and they were Friday 31^st December 1999 and Saturday 1^st July 2000 inclusive.  If I wore red lamé right now I’d look like a Christmas bauble.  I’m currently dressed down on the sofa.  I look like a heap of dirty washing.

Yes, you’re right: Caroline is a very lucky woman.

The plan for tonight is this: a few bottle of Fizz, a nice supper (lamb with caponata followed by brioche bread and butter pudding) and to have lapsed into a vegetive state by the time Rick Astley is on the telly. 

I will try to be awake at midnight.  Just to make sure 2023 leaves the fucking building.  To escort it out over the threshold and make sure it knows it’s barred.

To the rest of you who aren’t calendar years that can be divided by 1, 7, 17, 119, 289, it is my pleasure to wish you a happy new year.  May it massage you like warm towels, cosset you like an army of servants and tick every metaphorical box imaginable. 

And if it doesn’t then: back straight, teeth and tits proud and keep buggering on.

Love Ben. x

Advent Flog 2023 #24 – Silent-ish Night

Christmas Eve, it’s late and just me in the living room.  Everyone else had gone to bed or left.  Not a creature was stirring, not even a…  cat.

That’s a complete lie, Tarragon’s posed up on the speakers by the telly, poised like an Egyptian deity and staring fixed at something/nothing over my right shoulder.  Cats are very good at staring intently at nothing.  It’s all part of the feline mind games you get accustomed to after over half a decade of indenture.

The house is very quiet.  This isn’t strictly true either.  I can hear the creak of the floorboards above me as my father-in-law fidgets in his sleep.  But it’s quiet enough.  We’ve been told there will be no more building work next door until the new year.  Compared to the 12 month cacophony of trades and contractors next door, it’s do quiet I can almost hear my nasal hairs grow.

I shouldn’t really complain.  One of the builders next door saved our bacon the Friday before Christmas.  The downstairs loo suddenly started gushing water like Niagara Falls and Caroline dispatched me next door to beg for a plumber while she swaddled the base of the bowl in towels like the Baby Jesus. 

We were very lucky, all of the trades were about to leave for Christmas, but when I explained our predicament, one of the handymen grabbed an adjustable spanner, ran into our house and sorted the issue in less than five minutes.

We were full of thanks, but he quickly fanned away those.  He thanked us in return for all our patience and understanding during the nearly year-long building works and wished us a Merry Christmas.

That was nice. 

On Christmas Eve we’d cooked a sirloin beef joint and trimmings for my parents and father-in-law.  A certain amount of drinking had accompanied the beef.  Just as well we had two functioning toilets with the number of aging bladders in the house. 

My parents were spending most of Christmas Day with my brother, sister-in-law and niblings, so we had a pre-Christmas Christmas the night before.  Presents were exchanged.  One Foot in the Algarve (digitally-remastered) played in the background.  My parents bickering mixed pleasantly with the crackle of the open fire.

But before we knew it the evening had sashayed away.  My parents had departed, everyone else with an ounce of sense had retired to bed and so it was just me and a cat left haunting the downstairs.

The majority of the presents were still huddled round the base of the fibre-optic tree, waiting to be rudely ripped asunder in the morning.  The tree itself is ailing.  It’s base is on the wonk and I’ve had to cheat certain branches towards the wall as some of the lights are failing.

We should probably invest in a new tree for next Christmas.  But I think I said that last year.  And If we threw out everything in the house with a wonky base that didn’t shine as brightly as it used to I’d be in the builder’s skip next to the tree.

Tarragon had bored of posing on the speaker and padded off to find somewhere in the house to sleep.  I took that as my queue to do the same.  I made a mental note to patch up the tree in the new year.  And hopefully the same would happen to me.

Bedtime.  Lights out.  Advent Flog done for another year.

And to all a good night.

Advent Flog 2023 #23 – Pegram’s

Yes, I know the last two instalments of the Advent Flog are late.  Badly late, although still the right calendar year, so that’s something.  What can I say?  Trying to do Christmas on one bad wheel was tiring and time-consuming.  It’s taken me a day or so to gather my energies.

I’m writing this with my foot up and a fortifying glass of Baileys to hand.  Baileys-esque, anyway.  Fake Baileys.  Faileys.  Aldi’s Specially Selected Irish Cream Liqueur.  Perfectly palatable.  Healthy?  No, obviously, but it could be worse.  We were talking about making egg nogg for Christmas and that’s basically a handwritten invitation to a heart attack and diabetes.

I used to know a chap who made his own Baileys.  Gerry Pegram was his name.  He’d make you Pegram’s Cream Liqueur at cost.  I forget the ingredients, but cheap whisky and condensed milk featured.  The only caveats with Pegram’s Cream Liqueur was he could only make you two litres per serving (“That’s just the recipe”) and it had to be drunk within a month of production or else it would go off.

I never took him up on the offer.  Drinking two litres of cream liqueur in a month seemed like a bit of a challenge.  I did taste it though, and Pegram’s Cream Liqueur was indistinguishable from the genuine article.

Gerry’s homemade Baileys is the first thing I think about when I think about him.  I worked with Gerry at the end of his working life and the beginning of mine at Zurich Financial Services (Allied Dunbar when I joined).  Gerry was ex-forces and then moved in being a financial adviser.  When we crossed paths we were working for a team investigating the mis-selling of pensions, so he was very much a poacher-turned-gamekeeper.

He was very dapper, was Gerry.  And slightly wolfish.  There was danger in his grin.  Out of the group of older colleagues I used to drink with and he was the one I most wanted to like me.  I think there was always a step of distance between us as I tried too hard for his approval.  But when I wasn’t winding my neck out too far he tolerated me and told me wonderful stories.

He told me he went on his nephew’s stag weekend in Scotland and they ended up in an establishment that was a curry house and a strip club.  What he couldn’t get his head around was you had to walk through the strip club to get to the curry house and that seemed to him to be entirely the wrong way round.  You have the curry first, don’t you, he reasoned?  He found the idea of having a pre-curry lap dance very back-to-front. 

I think about that a lot.  What is the right way round?  Do you want a lap dance on an empty stomach?  Equally, is it a great idea to have an young Estonian lady gyrating on your lap when you’ve got a rising tide of the curry sweats.

The more I think about it Gerry was one of the great thinkers of his generation.

Gerry retired, but he’d still come along on Thursdays for a drink with ex-colleagues.  Right up until he had a stroke – a nasty one – and he was robbed of his mobility and his words.  His son would still bring him along occasionally.  The smile was lopsided, but still dangerous, and his eyes still had their shine, even if he was only capable of gibberish.

Christ, he’s been dead nearly a decade now. 

Christmas is a time for ghosts.  I’d like to conjure up old Gerry Pegram’s spirit.  I think he’d find the older, less gauche and more cynical, me far more to his tastes.  It’d be nice to share a glass, enjoy his company and not be so obsessed with grasping for his approval. 

Or maybe he’d be saddened by how weathered I’d become and encourage me to reach back and try to rediscover some of my lost ghost of my wide-eyed innocence?

Who knows, eh?

You can read more about Gerry here.

Advent Flog 2023 #22 – Stuffed

And on the 22^nd of December we found ourselves briefly turkey-less.

Mad really.  We’d booked one of those “click and collect” things with Aldi (or Lidl, I get them mixed up all the time; they’re basically the same thing).  On the morning of the “collect” we received an email detailing the items they were going renege on.   

These included: goose fat, streaky bacon, a gammon joint and – most notably – a turkey.  All animal-based products, I notice.  Have Aldi (or Lidl) gone “woke”.  Seems unlikely, they’re German. 

This did mean that Caroline had to go out and forage for turkey.  And she swiftly found one on the shelves of the Aldi (I think it was Aldi) that she was doing the “click and collect from…

….Hold the fuck on.

I think we all know that supermarkets over-order turkeys at Christmas, don’t we?  That’s just natural.  People, including us, like to eat turkey on Christmas Day for some unfathomable reason.  It’s not the best of meats.  Like poultry designed by Elon Musk. 

I should probably say here that Caroline asked me if I actually wanted turkey on Christmas Day and I said yes.  Possibly due to some form of Stockholm Syndrome.  We do cook a turkey well (due to brining it before cooking in the American style) and the leftovers are generally a delight.  Turkey and stuffing sandwiches are a rare pleasure, especially with a splodge of cranberry and bread sauces to sweeten (and savoury) the deal.

We’re cooking beef twice before Christmas anyway, as part of two pre-Christmas, Christmas meals, so it’s probably best that that we don’t overload too much on culinary pleasure over the Festive Holidays.

Caroline picked up a gammon on her travels as well to replace the one Aldi denied us.  As in the cured pork joint, not a member of the local Conservative club.  I don’t know exactly when we’ll be eating it, but I think we both get a bit nervous over Christmas without an emergency gammon in the freezer.  Why risk starvation?

Goose fat has been precured as well, to guarantee proper crispness to the potatoes.  Funny how goose fat has become a middle class Christmas staple, but barely anyone has a goose for their table.

My Mum cooked goose for Christmas one year.  It turned out they’re about 90% fat and, once rendered, the remaining bird provided as much meat as a chicken wing.  Luckily my mother had cooked an “emergency turkey” as well as she was suspicious of the goose.

I can’t remember how the goose tasted.  It was probably nicer than the turkey, gamier almost certainly, but I can only really remember the relief when I found out there was back-up turkey available.

“Media vita in meleagris gallopavo domestico sumus.”

In the midst of life we are in turkey.

Advent Flog 2023 #21 – Mid Winter

The shortest day and the longest night.  We’re halfway through the dark.

It seems quiet.  Maybe I’ve just got used to the near-constant cacophony of the builders next door?  You’d hope they’d gone home by now, it’s barely a sniff from midnight.  Caroline’s gone to bed so I’m left with a glass of rum and coke, YouTube and my thoughts.

My job’s at risk at work.  That’s annoying.  I found out at the end of November.  Two days after I’d got back from nearly a month of convalescing from the whole foot/blood pressure thing, which is what could be described as “sub-optimal”.

It may well be fine.  There are jobs for me to compete for.  I just need to get body, mind and soul together, which feels a bit like trying to unscramble a plate of eggs at the moment.

Ho-hum.  No point worrying about it.  I will, obviously.  I have been.  That ship has sailed.  I’ve had nearly a month to get used to the unsettling and uncertain reality.  Funny to think one of the reasons I turned away from the idea of a career in acting was the lack of job security.  Ho-ho.

Nothing to do about it until after Christmas.  That’s when the horse trading and competition for jobs will begin.  I’ve got two weeks holiday starting imminently. 

In the meantime, I’ve faced worse than this.  I climbed out of a nervous breakdown armed only with chapter 56 of a Booker Prize winning novel.  I’m resourceful.  When I was at college I wrote 69% of a musical in a fortnight.  I’m a surprising motherfucker.  I managed to get myself in a Doctor Who story with Paul McGann.  That surprised me.

Five years ago I got laid off in far worse circumstances.  Same time of year.  Caroline wasn’t working at the time and I had to tumble back down into the uncertainty of temping.  I wasn’t sleeping, fizzing with anxiety and got so stressed that at moments of crisis my throat tightened so much I was dry retching. 

And yet I’m still here.  A bit pissed off, and a bit pissed, but still typing. 

It’ll be fine.  And if it isn’t fine then I’ll cope.  I’ll shine the light of words upon it.

Nearly midnight.  It’s quiet.  Time for bed.

It’s the longest night after the shortest day.  But we’re halfway out of the dark.

Advent Flog 2023 #20 – Beckham Injury

Today was a day for calls with my GP.  I say “my”, I’m not entirely sure I have a GP anymore.  If I have, we either haven’t met or haven’t been introduced properly.  I’m not posh, as long as they’re wearing a white coat and a stethoscope, I’m easy.

These were telephone appointments so I’ve no idea if the doctors in question were wearing white coats or stethoscopes; they could’ve been as naked as nymphs for all I know.  And if they were then good luck to them, it is nearly Christmas after all.

I should probably add that these were fairly standard telephone consultations.  One of them to discuss some blood tests a month ago and the other to discuss the ongoing matter of my blood pressure. 

I received the blood pressure call first from a lady doctor.  “Doctor Ain”, I think?  She sounded a bit stern, but that may be projection on my part.  No great dramas on the call, which is what you’d prefer while suffering from stubborn hypertension.  The readings are still high, so I am to continue on the pills at a slightly elevated dose and take more blood pressure readings after Christmas.

The blood test results call came later from a different doctor.  Doctor Ogundeji?  An older chap, by the sound of him.  Unruffled.  I’d been told not to expect anything dramatic in the results; if there had been anything urgent, they would have called me as soon as they had the results.  Or sent an ambulance.  Or a priest.

And so it was a very low-stakes conversation.  The infection markers, which had been sky high, were back down to normal levels so my blood wasn’t a Scotch broth of white platelets anymore.  That’s nice.  Cholesterol levels were low.  I was expecting that, I don’t live on a diet of raw beef and tallow, despite what you might have heard.  The markers for alcohol consumption were within acceptable levels.  Lol.  All good.

During the chat with the Doctor, he talked about the tests I’d had in hospital – comparing them favourably to my last blood tests – and the X-ray I had on my foot was mentioned.

“Ah yes,” I said, “that was the one test that didn’t show anything.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” he replied, “There’s evidence of an historic fracture in your first metatarsal.”

That was news to me.  I think I would’ve noticed breaking one of the biggest bones in my foot.  But the Doctor continued: 

“And the X-ray also showed degenerative damage in your fifth metatarsal.”

That’s connected to your little toe in case you’re curious.

“They didn’t mention that at the hospital,” I said.

“Really?” he sounded surprised.

“I suppose they were a bit distracted by my blood pressure.”

The Doctor laughed:

“I don’t blame them.”

He advised me to get the foot checked out after Christmas and suggested I seek medical advice if I became feverish.

And that was the end of the call.  It turns out my left foot is like a leather swag bag full of broken crockery.  That would explain a few things.  Don’t get me wrong, I was relieved.  The foot is still swollen and hurting even after the infection has passed, so it’s a good to have a reason.  I’ve got an appointment booked with Caroline’s physiotherapist in the New Year now, so she can look at the foot and assess whether my career with the Royal Ballet can be salvaged.

Here’s some final advice to you all: if you ever visit a hospital with a foot injury, try to make sure your blood pressure isn’t lethally high as other details might be missed.

Advent Flog 2023 #19 – Right Down the Plug Hole

Did you know that I wrote 70% of a musical once?  It was called “Down the Plug Hole”…

…Although, actually, I didn’t come up with the title, so it’s more like 69%, isn’t it?  Christ, did I actually write any of this sodding musical?

As mentioned we played to ten Primary Schools in five days, doing two shows a day.  Quite a busy little tour.  But our tolerably-written musical was tolerably well-rehearsed.  We were fit and young though.  Full of pre-Britpop brio.  The early 90’s, on the threshold of the best of times.

And we had our nice, shiny primary-colour painted costumes.  A few problems with those, actually.

First problem: the week of the tour was very humid.  The school halls we were performing in weren’t air conditioned, the best you could do was open a window.  The think winter suits and hats we’d bought and painted with several coats of gloss paint didn’t let out much heat.  Any heat.  The show was only an hour long, but after sixty minutes of acting, singing and throwing ourselves about in those costumes we were absolutely poached.  Twice a day.

On the fourth day of the tour the guy playing the Private Eye, Harry Lake, passed out in between scenes.  Heatstroke I suspect.  I don’t know, I’m not a doctor.  He went down like a felled tree.  I think his head might have bounced off the gym floor a bit.  Still, what can you do?  We dragged him back to his feet and pushed him back on stage.

Serves him right for deliberately getting that “flying back from Chicago” line wrong in rehearsals.

Second problem: at the end of each performance we had to change out of suffocating outfits.  And after a couple of performances the stench coming out those rigid suits was quite indescribable.   Proper “kill a skunk at 10 paces repugnant”.  Some more than others, the personal hygiene of the cast varied.

The worst bit was the second performance of the day.  Because that involved squeezing back into the slimy, sweaty, stinking costumes for another hour of torture.  I can’t describe the sensation of trying to get those suits back on for the afternoon performance.  I think we burned the costume at the end of the run.  You’ve never seen anything quite so flammable.

Third problem: the suits were a bit brittle.  It was quite a physical show; we were young, invulnerable and weren’t thinking about all the joint pain we’d be facing in later life.  And because the suits were mostly comprised of perspiration and gloss after a couple of performances they began to crack and tear. 

They had to be patched up with coloured masking tape and the jagged edges of the tears drew blood against flesh several times a show.  It’s a minor miracle none of us got sepsis.

By the end of the week we were all exhausted, smelly and wrinkled like prunes.  I think I lost a stone, and that was back in the day when a stone in weight was a far more considerable loss.

Did I enjoy it, though?  Of course I did.  Looking back I enjoyed more of the time I spent earning that useless BTEC in Performing Arts than I realised.

And if I hadn’t been stuck with that useless BTEC I wouldn’t have ended up at Sunderland University and I wouldn’t have missed that for anything in the world.

Advent Flog 2023 #18 – Further Down the Plug Hole

Did you know that I wrote 70% of a musical once, a long time ago?  Maybe 60% of a musical, actually.

Oh wait, I did that bit.

Rehearsals for Down the Plug Hole were ongoing.  We were forced to rehearse things out of order as I was writing scenes out of order, filling the gaps in the script.  Things only slowed down when they were waiting for me to write new scenes.  And I was waiting for me to write new scenes as I was in some of these scenes.  I thought me should pull his finger out, to be quite honest.

In between that I was listening to our band’s output, trying to think up lyrics for the songs.  Between us we came up with yet-to-be-discovered future classics like “You Want to Have a Bath Right Now”, “Drainpipe Battle” and “Vince (was a Water Vole)”. 

Yes, I was going a bit out of my mind now you come to mention it.

I got very tired.  I lost my shit at the guy playing Harry Lake at one point.  There was a gag, early on in the first scene.  It was a shit gag, I freely admit that.  A stolen gag at that.

“I just flew in from Chicago…  and, boy, are my arms tired.”

And he didn’t like the joke.  I didn’t like the joke.  But it filled a joke-shaped hole in the script.  So he repeatedly complained about the line.  But the director told him to get with it as we were running out at time.

And so he got the line wrong every time we ran the scene, deliberately.  And he look at the director and roll his eyes.

And it was after he did that for about the twentieth time that I threw the page of script I was writing to the ground, called him some very bad words and had to be physically restrained by the rest of the cast.

A break in rehearsals was called.

I wasn’t the only one working hard.  Sets and props were being built.  Costumes were being made.  To replicate the look of the Dick Tracy movie a load of second-hand suits, ties, hats and shirts were bought from charity shops and they were painted with brightly-coloured gloss paint.  The suits look great…

…to begin with. 

Eventually, with much relief, I finished penning the last scene of the show.  Literally penned, I wrote every word long hand on whatever scraps of paper I had to hand.  I’ve still got them in a folder in the house somewhere.  I wouldn’t say I was proud of it – most of it had been thrown together and some of it had missed – but I did feel a sense of achievement.  I’d written most of a musical, mostly on my own.

Having finished writing I had the luxury of only having to worrying about rehearsing and learn my lines.  Bliss.

And once that was finished all we had to do was tour a physically-strenuous comedy musical about water round ten Wiltshire Primary Schools in a week in the middle of a blazing hot summer.

Piece of piss.  What could go wrong?

Advent Flog 2023 #17 – Down the Plug Hole

Did you know I wrote a musical once, a long time ago?

Most of a musical, at least.  Let’s say roughly 98%.  Actually, bit less than that as I didn’t write the music.  I wrote all the lyrics though.    So, let’s say 70%. 

The year was 1992 (or 1993) and I was at college studying for a BTEC in Performing Arts.  Now, those of you who know that I got good-to-decent grades at GCSE will be wondering why I was studying for a BTEC.  Fair question.  The gentleman who was starting up the qualification (if I can use that term loosely) at New College, Swindon had visited my school and made it sound like a very exciting thing to do.  Within a few months it became obvious that this particular BTEC was the academic equivalent of Betamax, and he buggered off after getting a job at the Tower of London.

I can’t remember what the job was.  Something arts related, I’m pretty sure he didn’t run away to London to become a Beefeater or anything like that.  

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed doing the BTEC, mostly.  Of all the useless things in my life I’ve done it’s probably one of my favourites.  We were a rag-tag bunch.  I think there were roughly 25 students on the course at the start, but those numbers thinned to about 10 by the last few terms. 

And towards the end of those last few months an opportunity arose.  We were offered funding from a Wiltshire water wildlife trust to put together an educational musical to tour schools on the topic of water preservation. 

I mean…  Who wouldn’t jump at that?

It was a very little money offered, so we’d have to do it on the cheap.  And a very good way to do a play on the cheap is to write it yourself.

At least that was the plan.  We agreed the basic idea quickly enough.  The Warren Beatty “Dick Tracey” movie had famously flopped a few years previously, so we decided to do a pastiche of that. 

Anyone else remember that Dick Tracy film?  Did Warren Beatty really make that movie just to shag Madonna?  There are easier ways, surely?  Especially if you’re Warren Beatty.

Back to our musical, called “Down the Plughole”.  This was the plot: an American PI, Harry Lake (Lake, see what we did there?), is brought over from Chicago to Wiltshire by the Mayor of Swindon to investigate a gangster-led water wasting racket.  Lake corners the ecologically-unsound rascals, faces off with their boss, Mr Big, and defeats him, saving Wiltshire’s waterways as a result.

Making it a musical was a no-brainer as we had a talented, if dissolute, trio of musicians in the group who could throw together a catchy tune in a heartbeat.  It would be broad, garish fun.

Actually, I didn’t come up with the original premise either, so I probably only wrote 60% of it.  Damn it!

The idea was that we, the cast, would write the script, scene by scene, in small groups, sharing the load and knitting the pieces together like patchwork.  In reality by the time we were on the cusp of rehearsals I’d written six scenes in the time the rest of the cast had written one.

And, by that point, I’d already written about a third of it, so it made sense for me to write the rest.

Okay.

And I was also in the show, playing one of Mr Big’s heavies, Clarence.

Um…

Oh and the band were struggling to come up lyrics.  Maybe I could write those as well?

Fuck.

[To be continued.]

Advent Flog 2023 #16 – Chapeau

I do like hats.  I’m like the late Queen Mother in that regard.  I’m less keen horse racing, drinking Dubonnet and gin for breakfast and being dead since 2002, but as far as owning hats is concerned, we’re on the same page.  Hats are great.  They protect you from the elements; from the sun during the British summer and inclement weather during the other 50 weeks a year. 

My current hat wardrobe is sparce but serviceable, consisting of two trilbies – one jet black and the other Indiana Jones tan – a proper Panama hat for travelling to sunnier climbs, a collapsable pork pie hat for more casual summer occasions and a tweed flat cap for the winter months at home. 

A more ostentatious hat aficionado might try to pad out their millinery repertoire with some more outré items, like a fez or a deerstalker, but I’m not Tommy Cooper, I’m not Sherlock Holmes and I’m not a complete wanker.

And I’m not the Queen Mother as confirmed above.

I do dread the thought of losing hats, especially as some of the ones I own are more vintage than others.  My tan-coloured fedora was a gift for my 17^th birthday and its long out-lasted the Swindon tailors it was bought from.  I’ve had a few near misses.  And yesterday was one of those.

My tweed flat cap is probably my least glamourous hat.  Equally, it sees the most use.  It’s a faithful servant, invulnerable to rain and strong winds.  My paternal grandfather habitually wore a flat cap.  The tweed on the outside was weathered like oilskin, but the plump material on the inside was soft of silk and smelt of his aftershave.  I would never have fitted me after he died, but I wish I still had it.

One Christmas, one where we were out in New Jersey visiting my in-laws, they were a bit stuck for gift ideas and so – once pressed – I remembered my grandfather’s habitual hea adornment and suggested a flat cap for me as a present.  A whim, really.  But on Christmas Day I was presented with it and it’s stood by my, this American cap, habitually tucked in the pocket of my winter coat in case of “weather”.  A decade later it was still a faithful servant.

Friday night we went out to a wine tasting.  Out we went, into a misty night.  I wore my cap.  A short limp later we were in a local vintners, sampling the finest wines known to Swindon. A very pleasant few hours and Magnum Wine Emporium.  They even provided me with the shop’s only chair to rest my lame leg.

After several snifters of champagne, red and white wine and port, we and two friends carried on to a nearby pub for a couple more drinks (for our health, you understand?)  It was only as we were leaving I reached for my pocket and found my dear old flat cap missing.  No cap.  I looked under the table and on the floor.  No cap.

No real panic.  I did quickly walk back round the corner and back to Magnum to retrace our steps, but I couldn’t see it on the pavement.  Never mind..  I’d been wearing it when I got to Magnum.  It was probably in there, laying under the coat rack.  I would give them a call in the morning.

But no.  I called Magnum next day and no flat cap.  There was a scarf left behind.  Did I want a scarf?  No thank you, I didn’t want a scarf, but many thanks for the offer,

I felt a twinge.  The American flat cap wasn’t the peacock of my hat collection, but it had been a long-standing and loyal servant, protecting me in all weathers,  The idea he might be sat lost and forgotten in a gutter didn’t sit well with me.

I brooded a bit.  Replacing it would be simple enough, but it wouldn’t be my cap.  It wouldn’t be the American cap I’d requested on a whim.  It would be a blank slate.  I’d put a lot of wearing into that cap.  I’d weathered it as much as the weather.

As the sun was beginning to set I took a walk back to The Hop, the pub I’d been in when I’d realised the loss of my cap.  Maybe it had been handed in.  If not I could tilt a pint to mourn its passing.

And do you know: it was there!  A stranger had handed it in having seen it dropped on the threshold.  It was battered, but in one piece.  I still had a pint, but a celebratory one.  My loyal servant had been returned to me.

I could’ve easily found a new flat cap.  But it wouldn’t have been weathered by the elements to near-oilskin.  The inside wouldn’t be soft and scented of me from a decade of wearing. 

A hat, especially a hard-working one, isn’t owned.  It’s earned.