The Pauper's hat.

My friend Alistair has been using his golf hat for at least these last five years. It has protected him from the heat of all the summer months as well as from the frosty cold winter mornings. It is now in complete ruin after such a long service. And yet Alistair doesn’t even consider replacing it by the new one he bought from the pro-shop a couple of years back when he last visited his favourite golf course somewhere in the south of England.

Grandma’s house-shoe is not much healthier. The soles are still existing in unison and attached together like inseparable twins. But the holes right under the big toes give its venerable age away. Not grandma’s age, I mean, but the slippers’.

The way we sometimes attach ouselves to very old personal items is very reflective and sometimes mysterious.

I can’t see why, for instance, Mr. Peacan cannot come to an irrevocable decision to throw away all the preserved food tins and cans that crowd most of the shelves in his backyard shed and the attic. The old reason for it was to have a tin available wherein to clean his water-colour brushes after a long session of still life painting in his studio or an even longer one spent on the moors painting the landscape. His wife believes that he has enough tins to supply a multitude of painters.

Perhaps the idea of vintage this and vintage that has originated from the natural instinct of preservation, both the self-preservation, as well as the preservation of all our material belongings. That is perhaps also why it is sometimes thought to be so difficult to give and contribute to those in need of help.

However, wearing to-day’s hallmarked clothing puts the idea of using ragged items, some of which in tatters, in a controversial focus. After all, Alistair’s golf hat is well within modern fashionable parameters. It has been worn for so long and reduced to shreads, thus achieving a qualifying standard to pass as a modern item of clothing. To this can be added the personal satisfaction that the state of Alistair’s hat has reached its venerable status through reasonable sheer wear and tear.

The train of argument above can be applied to a variety of persons and items.

People we know have been using their old car for ages but as long as it runs it will never be changed; some keep wearing their elegant old suits because their attachment to them is adorable, knowing too well that as long they they still fit, their waist dimensions have managed to keep almost the status quo, without actually needing any drastic alterations.

The above is, in fact, quite convincing. But hopefully not to the extent that it will induce us to reuse and recycle last year’s page a day diary for the same use during this year and the years to come.

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