If You Want to Get Ahead

When my daughter was about four, she was asked by her daddy whether she would like to go sailing. Would she like to take a trip in his wee boat, discover the thrill of being borne along by wind and sail, get lots of fresh air and sunshine, and maybe even see some dolphins?

            Her reply, after some thought, was ominous. Looking up at us, she declared:

“I’ll need a new hat.”

            See, I get that. It was an innocent distillation of the simple fact that in life, for some of us, it’s all about the accessories.

            Hats, though, are high-risk. Some people, like my daughter (who started young), can wear them brilliantly while others, like me, look a bit lie we’ve Got A Hat On. There’s a big difference.

            Andie MacDowell just about managed to pull off that huge cartwheel affair, the big black one that took up a whole pew, in Four Weddings And A Funeral, spawning the best part of a decade of copycat designs. But Andie MacDowell is about nine feet tall. I look like a field mushroom in big hats. If I stood still for too long at weddings with a big hat on, people would start leaving clutch bags and trays of drinks on my head. It’s just not worth it.

            But there again, if you go too far to the other extreme, hat-size-wise, the picture is even worse.

I was fascinated to learn that those dainty little clips of feathers or fake flowers or tiny stuffed animals aren’t hats at all - they’re called fascinators. Fascinators!  Isn’t it asking a lot of a feather or two to be fascinating? Particularly if worn on the head?  Why don’t we start calling shoes ‘Enchanters’? Scarves can be ‘Seducers’ and gloves can be, oh, heck, how about ‘Bewitchers’? Mortified yet?  Any thoughts for pants? Fascinators sound more like a race of Amazonian cyber-enemies from Doctor Who, than ritzy glorified hairgrips.

I first heard the word when out shopping for a wedding outfit and the lovely assistant, in impeccable Invernesian, asked: “is it a hat or a fascinator you’ll be wanting?” If you say it without pronouncing any of the ‘t’s you’re roughly there.

Picking up on the scared look, she showed me what she meant. Mostly the fascinators seemed designed to make the wearer look like a cross between Kylie on her ‘Showgirl’ tour and a wee circus pony, not that there’s much difference, come to think of it. They’re like putting a little exclamation mark on top of your outfit, and as I discovered, shopping for wedding clothes is never going to be that funny.

            Hats, for me, have to be more substantial than a duck feather and a desiccated fieldmouse, small enough so that nobody tries to rest their plate of quiche and sausage rolls on top of me, and cute and flattering enough to be worth buying in the first place. Not much to ask?

            My husband has slightly different criteria when it comes to hats. His latest purchase, a macho, stone-coloured canvas affair called a Tilley Hat, came with its own instruction manual, which I suspect played a not insignificant part in his decision to buy it.

            He had to learn the correct way to put it on, which straps went where and under what circumstances, how to re-shape it, how to store it and all about its noble history. Apparently, in Canada, one man’s Tilley Hat was pulled off his head and eaten by an elephant. Now that’s all very well but here’s the thing. It was pulled off his head and eaten by an elephant THREE TIMES. And after each time it was, well, retrieved by its owner, run under the tap (we hope) and worn again, good as new.

Even if you leave aside the speculation about what he was doing so up close and personal with the elephant to have allowed the situation to arise on three occasions in the first place, the mental image of the poor bloke dolefully following the elephant around for days on end, with a clothes peg over his nose, carrying a spade and a pail, is what I’d call properly fascinating.