The Second Hat

One of the greatest labour-saving inventions of today is tomorrow.

I have put it off for long enough. Tonight you will find me with my thinking cap on, angrily gulping a large mug of coffee. I will not 'furiously inhale' the large mug of coffee because my fiction tutor doesn't realise think that makes sense. Long story - can you tell I'm touchy about it?! The task for tonight is finishing my stories off for my upcoming module deadline. For those who didn't know, I've been posting my short stories here, but none uploaded so far have been short-listed for my portfolio. I will inevitably post them once they have been fiddled with/actually written.

In case you were wondering, the hat above does say POO BUM. It was created as a Petrol Bashers prototype hat for the Toyota Technology Challenge. I entered as part of the PB team with my friends Amelia, Hannah and Jade (or Milz, Hanz and Jay-Z) in 2005-2006. Photographic evidence of the finished hat can be found here, here, and here, and all the years in between. There I am, in all my 14 year old, gormless glory, inexplicably on a billboard. I still have those Converse. They have Batman on them. We didn't win (in spite of the war paint) because I pushed our chariot off the starting line rather too enthusiastically; it did a wheelie and fell over.

And to close, here is another shot of the prototype.

"IF YOU CAN READ THIS, I SET YOU ON FIRE"

Clearly I was an angry young hat maker.

The First Hat

A gentleman is any man who wouldn't hit a woman with his hat on.

It's weird when you start noticing stuff. When you learn the history of Somalia and suddenly it pops up everywhere. When you hear the song 'Thank You Very Much' for the first time, and somehow it's in your head any time anyone thanks you for something. And most pertinently, when you watch Lord of the Rings for the first time and, as if by magic, you have hair like Frodo and everyone's quoting Gandalf. I was fairly certain that once I started making a point of wearing hats more frequently for my New Year's Resolution, I'd start noticing more hats being worn. It's been a little disappointing.

However, all is not lost. After a wonderfully slow start to the year, my Fellah and I managed to haul-arse to Benjamin Disraeli's house for a late afternoon walk. It was a bit nippy, so I wore my new coat and my old Amelia Earhart reminiscent boots. I also accepted the offer to borrow a hat. It was blue and covered in what I can only assume were small, woollen nipples. It was noted that I looked like a 1930s 'Where's Wally? Oh, there he is, with the Fuehrer'.

Attempting to look fascist noble.

Bring on the hats.