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ladyofastolatI watched Babe earlier tonight, since I was in the mood for something non demanding, and it happened to be on. At the end, the ecstatic crowd did what ecstatic crowds in hat-wearing times of Yore always seem to do - they all threw their hats in the air, way up up up up, and high.
How do they all get the right hat back? Surely it must be carnage and confusion. Cherished bonnets will be crushed under foot. Innocents will be struck in the face by hats thrown by people like me, with a complete inability to aim. (I tried welly wanging once. The welly flew off 180 degrees away from its intended direction, into the watching crowd of Morris dancers.) Black eyes will result as people lunge to catch their falling hat, and strike their neighbour by mistake. The police will be called as people lunge to catch their falling hat, and grope their neighbour by mistake. Fist fights will break out over the rightful ownership of expensive trilbies. There will be tears. The minute the camera pans away from the crowd and back to the main characters, the innocent scene of spontaneous hat-related joy must surely dissolve into bloody mayhem.
And the feuds! I'm imagining a rural setting of teeming hatred - something nasty in the woodshed, and so on. At length, the main character, a newcomer from the city, will uncover the truth behind all the teeming: the terrible hat incident at the Ramsbottom Marrow Festival of 1934.
Or is the art of hat-throwing an ancient rural skill, like withy cutting or coracle making, which we lesser men of nowadays can never know? Did they practise it from childhood, these hat-wearing people who were likely to frequent the sort of places where hats were often thrown. Or did they attach their hats to their persons with long bits of elastic, like children with mittens? Or did everyone sew their full name and address inside their hat, so people could reclaim them after the event from the official hatman who went round after every ecstatic event and rounded up all the stray headwear?
How do they all get the right hat back? Surely it must be carnage and confusion. Cherished bonnets will be crushed under foot. Innocents will be struck in the face by hats thrown by people like me, with a complete inability to aim. (I tried welly wanging once. The welly flew off 180 degrees away from its intended direction, into the watching crowd of Morris dancers.) Black eyes will result as people lunge to catch their falling hat, and strike their neighbour by mistake. The police will be called as people lunge to catch their falling hat, and grope their neighbour by mistake. Fist fights will break out over the rightful ownership of expensive trilbies. There will be tears. The minute the camera pans away from the crowd and back to the main characters, the innocent scene of spontaneous hat-related joy must surely dissolve into bloody mayhem.
And the feuds! I'm imagining a rural setting of teeming hatred - something nasty in the woodshed, and so on. At length, the main character, a newcomer from the city, will uncover the truth behind all the teeming: the terrible hat incident at the Ramsbottom Marrow Festival of 1934.
Or is the art of hat-throwing an ancient rural skill, like withy cutting or coracle making, which we lesser men of nowadays can never know? Did they practise it from childhood, these hat-wearing people who were likely to frequent the sort of places where hats were often thrown. Or did they attach their hats to their persons with long bits of elastic, like children with mittens? Or did everyone sew their full name and address inside their hat, so people could reclaim them after the event from the official hatman who went round after every ecstatic event and rounded up all the stray headwear?
