Hats Off!!

I was highly amused today to receive an e-mail from my sainted aunt, asking me to please contact a certain person. Said aunt had received, along with quite a lot of my long-suffering family, a handmade hat for Christmas, and, given the freezing weather still menacing much of England, had evidently been wearing her hat around town. She was apparently bearded by a lady wanting me to get in touch - this lady being the buyer for a department store! I can't imagine much will come of it, the logistics being what they are, but I was desperately flattered, nonetheless. (Although knowing what I do about luck, I feel rather sorry for the imaginary aspiring milliner whose dream opportunity I just pinched!)

I append above, just for the heck of it, a somewhat weirder outcome of my hatcraft than the elegant example my aunt is currently modelling. The excrescence on top, although it's hard to make out from this angle, is actually a flight delay made concrete (I was finishing quite a few of my gifts off when we were horribly held up flying from Germany to England for Christmas). Calmly-crocheted weirdness, I have discovered, is a super means of keeping one's place in the queue when travel chaos descends (irresistible nosiness of one's enforced neighbours seems to mean they're less inclined to thump you when things get nasty). I would also like to say that my sister has the weirdest taste in hats in the world: for no-one else would I have dared to crochet a fluorescent pink and yellow flight delay... but good for her! Won't get lost on the ski slopes, say I...

I was also tickled today, when cycling, to be described in awed tones by a child of around eight as, "Mummy!! There's a LADY riding a bike!!" (in German, of course). Made me laugh when the mother grinned and relayed it to me... then of course I looked down and thought, OK maybe most Germans don't scoot to the library wearing floor-length skirts dotted with pearls, good gloves, fur coat and hair loose and curling right down their back. But if it makes someone smile, why not?

And for those wondering how my coaching went after all those margaritas, well I absolutely didn't deserve it but it was wonderful! Such marvellous music! And only one point where the pianist, with whom I'd been chatting about last night's fun in the corridor previously, caught my eye after a huge high note, intended to be held for the drama and then swooping down around a 13th, unintentionally cracked about an octave lower... A superbly-timed lift of the eyebrow and on we went - who says the Germans don't have a sense of humour?