Christmas hat
Posted by Fiona Nevile in Cottage tales | 14 comments
Cucumbers in the greenhouse last summer
Today I finally chose my Christmas present from Danny. It’s been weeks of Internet surfing procrastination. Rather fun too. I’ve moved from secateurs to gardening gloves. Books to wellies. Root trainers to cloches. I’ve had garden cloches before – very handy but not very personal – I did ask for them so it wasn’t really like being given a new vacuum cleaner. But this year I was determined to find something that was a bit more personal.
Over the last 18 months or so since I’ve been off work my hair has thinned considerably. It used to be thick and curly now perhaps as revenge for not guzzling my greens all my life it has become thin and straight. I had it cut quite short last week hoping that it would curl again. No such luck. It’s now short, thin and straight. More ostrich than poodle.
“Do you think that I’m going bald?”
“Well it was much thicker when I first met you…”
“Thin hair means that my head feels so cold.”
“A hat could do the trick.”
“Indoors?”
So all those old women with beards that I spotted as a child, the ones who were wearing hats indoors, clearly had a thinning hair problem. I’d assumed that they just liked wearing hats.
Delighted to report that I haven’t got a beard just yet.
Working in the vegetable patch this afternoon, in a damp drizzly mist I suddenly realised that what I needed and wanted was a Hat with a Brim. I have several woolly hats but they soon get wet and who except a deranged person wants to wear soaking wet headgear? Apart from that, the water settles on your face too. A brim would be the answer. That’s why all the pro gardeners that I know wear hats with a brim. Duuuh
Late this afternoon Danny suggested a grapevine might be a good present. I found this one. This grape is the same variety as the one that Capability Brown planted in the glasshouses at Hampton Court Palace and is still alive and thriving today. If ours lasts this long, we will be long underground. Beards and all.
The vine was a good price but the postage from Crocus is £5.99 so if I shop there I tend to look for something else to spread this postal burden. Isn’t it odd that postage up to £3.99 is fine but £5.99 seems excessive? I don’t have gardening clothes per se, just my own clothes, which are a bit ancient and much loved for all that. But I do like searching through the “rails” of gardening clothes on offer from gardening websites.
Then I spotted this hat . Durable, and the hat’s appearance improves with age. A brim. A winter and summer hat. I quickly measured my crown – medium size – a surprise as with little hair I was beginning to feel a bit like Beaker from The Muppets. I pressed the order button and hopefully this natty piece of headgear will be arriving very soon along with the vine.
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The hat is gorgeous. I can just picture you in it. Are you going to hang corks round the brim??
Wonderful hat I have a similar one in black Australian leather and wear it when I am out hunting with the dogs or just walking the only time it is a bit difficult is in very windy weather but I have a leather thong which goes under the chin and holds it on in hurricane conditions….
Love, love, love the hat. Itoo have the thinning hair problem. I was the same as you, nice thick hair and then 50 hit and it’s been thinning ever since. Old age can be the pits sometimes.
Normally ladies of a certain age and those of us younger versions with whacky hormones suffer from thinning hair when we have too much testosterone, in women, although it gives us legs like large mexican bird eating spiders and whiskery witchy-poo chins it also blesses us with thinning dry hair. Thyroid problems can also cause ladies hair to thin and problems with the adrenal glands on the kidney brought on by stress. However be warned that hat wearing although throws you a comfort blanket can in fact make baldness worse. Making your scalp hot and sweaty inside a hat and stopping circulation and fresh air to the scalp actually increases the death of the hair follicles.
Lots of zinc and magnesium should be on the menu in the form of a vit supplement or food i.e broccoli or seafood and if all out body hair and baldness take over consider a food supplement of agnus castus a berry ground into powder that can be in capsule or powder form to sprinkle on food it has a peppery taste, and has been used for centuries to lower testosterone ( originally by monks for obvious reasons).
Nice hat though very australian !!!!
That’s a very cool hat. I have a friend with thinning hair, her hair has always been very thin. She never mentions it, neither do I … She’s more than her hair, as I know you ladies are too, but at the same time I understand. We all have something about our bodies that is changing as we get older and is a problem for us. I have the opposite problem with my hair – too much of the damn stuff – at the moment it’s wild, dry, bushy and in need of a good trim and condition. It was actually booked for today, but with my stomach flu/virus thingy it will have to wait for another day….
If it makes you feel any better (and I know that it won’t), I too, am losing my hair. Steve has been pulling whiskers out of my chin since before we got married (a big indicator that he was a keeper!), but I waited until after we got married to inform him that the women in my family lose their hair, so I would be wearing my hair as long as I could, for as long as I could. I finally had to cut it short a year and a half ago. Fortunately, it’s somewhat wavy, so I can push it around to cover the thin spots on top. But it’s thinning all over my head, and I feel like I look like a really . old . cat.
I gave my husband a hat like that for Christmas years and years ago. It was a great hat and he wore it to shreds. Good choice, practical and really neat looking.
Oh yes this is a very fine hat most worthy of a Christmas present
Hi Fiona,
If you’ve not discovered HotUkDeals yet I always check the vouchers section before ordering online.
Punching in ‘Crocus’ into the voucher code search box looks like they had a 10% off voucher code until the end of Jan – which would have taken the sting out of the postage if nothing else 🙂
Every time I see a ‘promo code’ or ‘coupon code’ field on an order form I do a quick check to see if there is anything about – it all adds up 🙂
Dear Fiona, many years ago I was prescribed some medication that meant that I was unable to be in the sunshine for too long otherwise my skin would burn! It was then that hubby bought some hats for me. Since then I have loved wearing hats, and only wish that it was more common – it’s lovely to see people wearing hats. The hat from Crocus – oh yes, I can just picture you wearing it. Perfect!