found

Sometimes the universe is kind.
wrote boynton in a post describing a few lost items past.

Of course the tam-o-shanter got a guernsay in this list:

boynton sometimes looked at this with that defeatist anxiety - this is such a wonderful item, it can't last, and one day it will fall out of my unzipped backpack somewhere on the boulevard. It used to smell of wool and shampoo. And me? An item of headwear is such a personal item that boynton can't imagine a finder of road kill clothing easily adopting it.

earlier she had noted:
She suspects it is gone for good, but will forestall meeting the awful truth for a while longer

Sometimes the universe is kind. Like today. For there it was hibernating happily away at the back of a high cupboard in another house. Having passed through the five stages of grief, boynton had accepted its loss and moved on. Now we're in denial about joy. And as it's high summer, it'll probably enjoy an extended long service leave until mid May. Like Nora, our housemate, who is off to deepest darkest Europe tomorrow, without the benefit of her own woollen tam. The black watch did a runner sometime around November.

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Comments: found

I have a beret just like that. Gone.. slipped away to join the line of other berets I have lost. I thought they looked pretty stupid, until I put one on, and then I thought; stupid and warm.. YES
Posted by David Tiley at January 13, 2004 05:28 PM

I think it definitely is stupid and warm. And maroon seems to grow more stupid with the years.
Oh well. Who cares in July. It's warm. It never leaves my head.
I was once admonished by a beret-headed colleague for being hatless in winter, and she told us the percentage of body heat lost through being bare-headed. Forget the exact figure, but I duly bought a beret and never looked back.
Posted by boynton at January 13, 2004 06:01 PM

Great news about your Tam...Boynton! One of my English rellies was quoting that exact fact the other day about loss of heat through top of head. He couldn't remember the percentage either "but it's some incredible amount." Fingers crossed my black watch will turn up again one day.
Posted by Nora at January 13, 2004 11:57 PM

Think it will when you're not watching, Nora.

Perhaps it's just having a holiday somewhere.
Posted by boynton at January 14, 2004 12:21 AM

The only bonce cover I ever possessed was my bêrét noire. My school cap with the embroidered school motto "Nihil sine labore" adorning its peak.

The school cap was required wearing during the Monday "I love God and my country" Ararat High School assembly. (Yes I confess, I attended those the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha mass rallies. I was a member of the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha youth movement.)

The hapless capless were ushered aboard a train, pinned with variously coloured cloth triangles and made to stand shamefaced in the fartherest reaches of the quadrangle.

The natural habitat of the lesser monogrammed reticulated school cap was the back pocket of the Stamina grey woollen school trousers.

(Said trousers came with wonderfully illustrated sets of cards celebrating "The Wool Industry in Austalia". They were a small compensation for the rite of passage of those who had grown and moved on from short woollen trousers with their sensuous silky lining to the unlined abrasive long woollen trousers (70% Merino 30% Jex) which ensured an intitial couple of weeks of painful chafing to the delicate inner thigh. A rite of frottage.)

When filing into the quadrangle (replete with appropriate military music provided by Mr. Music via the Department of Education's standard issue wind-up HMV record player) it was the sport of a band Fagin's apprentices to deftly lift caps from back pockets of the unsuspecting, leaving deeply patriotic lads bereft and mortified when the "Boys, caps on for the National Anthem and Oath of Allegiance" order came down from Headmaster Horace Winston Norbert Crebbin.
http://gallery.cybertarp.com/albums/userpics/12178/hwnc.JPG (Unalloyed fact. Twas his name.)

My school cap went MIA sometime in November 1963, my penultimate year at school. It was the time when everyone else grieved for the loss of a President. It was the time I grieved for the loss of my cap.

Do you remember where you were when Sedgwick lost his cap?

I thought not.


Posted by Sedgwick at January 14, 2004 08:54 AM

Great! Glad to hear the tam o shanter returned. Normally you have to buy a new one before this happens.
Posted by mcb at January 14, 2004 04:54 PM

What follows denial? Come to think of it, how many stages of joy are there?
Posted by Gummo Trotsky at January 14, 2004 06:53 PM

Gummo,

These were the answers that got me to within a stones throw of Eddie writing out a cheque for a mill.

(1) The good cop/bad cop routine.

(2) Egg, caterpillar, pupae, butterfly.
Posted by Sedgwick at January 14, 2004 08:56 PM

Mr S. - Did Ararat pinch Nihill's rightful motto?
Great to read the lastest chapter. (The capless chap in the rites of frotagge)
We suffered through hat enforcement rituals at my school too, not to mention fashion crimes when they redesigned it from standard schoolgirl model to air-hostess.
What a wonderful name indeed borne by your Head.

mcb - exactly - this has often happened. So no bonus tam either this time (except for the op shop one which was never a fitting substitute!)

Glad Sedgwick cleared up the question, Gummo.
Googling in lieu of pondering returned a litany of stages - 3 stages of worship, 5 stages of prayer, 3 stages of mediator's experience, 20 stages of conversion from Perl to Python, the 8 stages of relationships, part one and 6 stages to a Strong Self Image...
The butterfly works for me.
Posted by boynton at January 15, 2004 12:47 PM