Old dogs, new tricks and bad hats
September 24th 2009 04:21
The trouble with this hat ...
I had been meaning to buy a hat, of the baseball cap style, for some time. The trouble with Melbourne, an Australian city of almost four million people renowned for the world's most capricious weather, is that a 30-minute run often involves sun, rain, wind, hail and tempest, not necessarily in that order.
I have been a jogger for three decades, but I never found that I needed a hat until I moved to Melbourne a couple of years ago. Melbourne has a way of throwing rain your way with little warning. I wear glasses and the world goes spotty. Then, in a matter of seconds, the clouds scatter and a fierce sun assaults you.
Then it will probably start snowing.
Yesterday was hat day. I left home and headed for the shopping precinct with the sole purpose of finding a hat to keep the sun off my head and the rain off my glasses. I was aiming for a department store, and was almost there when I passed a smaller shop, inside of which I saw baseball caps. This, surely, was an omen. In I went and selected a white cap to optimise sun reflection, and proceeded to the payment counter.
Arguably I should have heard a warning bell when I heard the price, but I was a man on a mission, a focused creature. In my mind, my hat and I were already an item. A pact had been signed, an irrevocable and lasting partnership dedicated to health, wellbeing and dry specs. I never questioned that this was a hat I could trust. Even if it only cost $2.
An hour later, my new hat and I went for a run. It was a lovely spring day, the sort of glorious weather which, when you find it in Melbourne, you know will change any minute. For now, however, all was well with my world.
... is that it kept sliding off ...
Except my hat. It wasn't windy — breezy perhaps, but not the stuff to make a sailor happy. Yet it was enough to threaten constantly the removal of my hat from my head. I tried to tighten the strap, but it was secured by a plastic buckle arrangement which refused to hold. Cheap! My hat was cheap rubbish!
After running for some time with one hand on my head to hold my hat on, I gave up and turned it around, Lleyton Hewitt-style, so the wind wouldn't catch the brim. But that didn't work either, and in frustration I swept the blood thing from my head and carried it.
... even when worn Lleyton Hewitt-style ...
The relationship which had promised so much was over. It had lasted less than 10 minutes.
My plan was to throw the hat into the first rubbish bin I saw, but then I hatched the plan to take some photographs to go with my report.
So the pictures have been taken and the story has been told, and I will now throw my hat in the garbage.
... so I'm giving it the bum's rush.
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