MILDRED’S HAT.
Mildred has many hats, each one exclusively reserved for specific activities, she has a lovely wide brimmed hat she wears whilst tending her perfect garden (one can never be too careful when it comes to those pesky, death dealing, cancer riddled sunrays). Another that feels just right for driving and matches her sensible leather driving gloves splendidly, not to forget her sewing hat and the lovely tweed trilby which helps her concentrate on her embroidery.
Vacuuming her plush carpets four times a day, ensuring the pile lies in just the correct way is a positive pleasure thanks to her housework hat, and riddling her multi fuel burner precisely eighty six times before she commences to give it a thorough polishing inside and out twice daily is a joy whilst wearing her ‘hard work hat’ and matching rigger gloves.
A jolly jaunt to the grocers would be unthinkable without her shopping hat, which affords her an air of ‘gracious Christian modesty’, with ‘smart lady about town’.
Her almost favourite hat is her church hat, smart, yet humble and coordinated perfectly with her demure Sunday best ensemble.
Her absolute favourite hat, better than all the rest by far, is her Smiting Hat.
Her Smiting Hat cost an absolute fortune, from the best milliner in London (that filthy fleshpot of a city), hand made by a meticulous little man in Covent Garden, it is certainly somewhat ostentatious, what with the racy red band and the billowing peacock feather.
She enjoys wearing the Smiting Hat at a jaunty angle, which she acknowledges is rather self-indulgent, but she punishes herself with the electricity and the wires, and the nipple rings after wearing it, so that’s alright.
Her friends and neighbours would certainly be shocked to see her wearing such an attention seeking accessory, especially Reverend Franks. Such an eventuality is of course unlikely, unthinkable even. Probably.
No one has ever seen Mildred sporting her jauntily placed Smiting Hat and lived.
Mildred Middens, sixty three year old spinster stands in the churchyard, finished for this week bellowing out her favourite hymns (they’re all her favourite) with unnerving gusto. She is shaking hands, exchanging pleasantries and magnanimously complimenting inferior hats. Her somehow unsettling smile (even to those around her who have no knowledge of the naked, emaciated man chained to the cast iron radiator in her basement), fixed like that of a professional ballroom dancer to her startlingly bony face.
Every sentence she utters is punctuated with a shrill laugh, an inappropriate ejaculation of someone desperate to be liked, to fit in.
As she compliments the Reverend on his sermon, she feels a shameful dampness spreading in her sensible Marks and Spencer panties, as in a dark corner of her convoluted mind she idly plays out various scenarios for the coming afternoon.
She completes her farewells, and leaving her God fearing friends at the church doors, heads down the cobbled path that winds through the carefully tended graveyard. In the company of the dead she is at ease and with no one but the tight lipped deceased to witness it, her rictus smile momentarily drops. She tries not to walk too quickly, too eagerly, always ready to replace the automatic smile (which never involves itself with her gimlet eyes), give a cheery wave and a jolly chuckle at a moment’s notice.
Despite herself, her desire to savour this time, to enjoy the crisp autumnal air, make it last as long as possible (this for her, the delicious anticipation, is a scintillating pleasure all its own), she begins to quicken her step.
(all rights reserved)
Mildred has many hats, each one exclusively reserved for specific activities, she has a lovely wide brimmed hat she wears whilst tending her perfect garden (one can never be too careful when it comes to those pesky, death dealing, cancer riddled sunrays). Another that feels just right for driving and matches her sensible leather driving gloves splendidly, not to forget her sewing hat and the lovely tweed trilby which helps her concentrate on her embroidery.
Vacuuming her plush carpets four times a day, ensuring the pile lies in just the correct way is a positive pleasure thanks to her housework hat, and riddling her multi fuel burner precisely eighty six times before she commences to give it a thorough polishing inside and out twice daily is a joy whilst wearing her ‘hard work hat’ and matching rigger gloves.
A jolly jaunt to the grocers would be unthinkable without her shopping hat, which affords her an air of ‘gracious Christian modesty’, with ‘smart lady about town’.
Her almost favourite hat is her church hat, smart, yet humble and coordinated perfectly with her demure Sunday best ensemble.
Her absolute favourite hat, better than all the rest by far, is her Smiting Hat.
Her Smiting Hat cost an absolute fortune, from the best milliner in London (that filthy fleshpot of a city), hand made by a meticulous little man in Covent Garden, it is certainly somewhat ostentatious, what with the racy red band and the billowing peacock feather.
She enjoys wearing the Smiting Hat at a jaunty angle, which she acknowledges is rather self-indulgent, but she punishes herself with the electricity and the wires, and the nipple rings after wearing it, so that’s alright.
Her friends and neighbours would certainly be shocked to see her wearing such an attention seeking accessory, especially Reverend Franks. Such an eventuality is of course unlikely, unthinkable even. Probably.
No one has ever seen Mildred sporting her jauntily placed Smiting Hat and lived.
Mildred Middens, sixty three year old spinster stands in the churchyard, finished for this week bellowing out her favourite hymns (they’re all her favourite) with unnerving gusto. She is shaking hands, exchanging pleasantries and magnanimously complimenting inferior hats. Her somehow unsettling smile (even to those around her who have no knowledge of the naked, emaciated man chained to the cast iron radiator in her basement), fixed like that of a professional ballroom dancer to her startlingly bony face.
Every sentence she utters is punctuated with a shrill laugh, an inappropriate ejaculation of someone desperate to be liked, to fit in.
As she compliments the Reverend on his sermon, she feels a shameful dampness spreading in her sensible Marks and Spencer panties, as in a dark corner of her convoluted mind she idly plays out various scenarios for the coming afternoon.
She completes her farewells, and leaving her God fearing friends at the church doors, heads down the cobbled path that winds through the carefully tended graveyard. In the company of the dead she is at ease and with no one but the tight lipped deceased to witness it, her rictus smile momentarily drops. She tries not to walk too quickly, too eagerly, always ready to replace the automatic smile (which never involves itself with her gimlet eyes), give a cheery wave and a jolly chuckle at a moment’s notice.
Despite herself, her desire to savour this time, to enjoy the crisp autumnal air, make it last as long as possible (this for her, the delicious anticipation, is a scintillating pleasure all its own), she begins to quicken her step.
(all rights reserved)