In Competition No. 2446 you were invited to provide a poem with the title of ‘The Danger of Queer Hats’. There are one or two queer hats in literature, like the one worn by Lear’s Old Man in the Kingdom of Tess, which was ‘a loaf of brown bread, in the middle of which he inserted his head’; or the one shared by Chesterton’s two friends who companionably smoked the same cigar underneath it. Dangerous hats are a different matter. Apart from some desperate puns — ‘bodyline bowlers’ and ‘poisonous berets’ — your hats were odd rather than lethal except for Shirley Curran’s judge’s black cap, ‘the real one to dread,/ For the day that he dons it he tells you, “You’re dead.”’
The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each. (It is amusing to see Nelson dying twice in a fortnight.) The bonus fiver is J.H. Smith’s.
Mrs Melissa Antimacassar
Loved different coverings for her head.
Sometimes on Sundays she would venture
Eponymously draped to church,
If someone guided her.
Nor could she see very much from within
Her many styles of cardboard box.
But when, as with the black biscuit tin,
Her husband contrived two eyeholes,
It frightened the children.
(That vase, too, was a very bad mistake:
She forgot to empty the water out.)
Best was the crimson lampshade;
Then Melissa lit up the town.
Worst, and last, was when she made
Do with a plastic bag.
J.H. Smith
Two ladies into retro chic
Discovered in a posh boutique
A pair of grand Edwardian hats —
Originals, and not ersatz.
The milliner had wrought with care.
A duchess would be proud to wear
The fruit of such exquisite skills:
A fantasy of pheasant quills.
Two hats to die for, quite unique.
The ladies didn’t need to speak
Or weigh the issue long and hard.
Each scrambled for her credit card.
The wisdom of their choice is moot.
That weekend at a local shoot
They were mistaken for the prey
And, full of birdshot, passed away.
G.M. Davis
He was always a toff and he liked to show off;
How he loved his ridiculous hat!
And I put it to him it was really quite rum
To be seen in a fight wearing that.
But he didn’t agree and rejected my plea,
Till a Frenchman observing his dress
Must have thought it was clear that a chap in such gear
Was the head of the navy, no less.
Hands clutching his neck, he fell down on the deck
And the silly hat slipped from his head;
With a terrible wail he went instantly pale,
‘Kiss me, Hardy,’ he moaned, and was dead.
There were many that cried when Horatio died;
Indiscretion had killed him, I fear,
For again and again I had tried to explain
There’s a danger in hats that are queer.
Frank Mc Donald
The calms of country houses
And the sins of city flats!
The mafficking carouses
Of Assyrian ziggurats!
The sapience of blouses
And the folly of cravats
And the trickery of trousers
And the danger of queer hats!
There’s an oddity of hatness
And a quiddity of hair,
There’s a fitness in the thatness
Which is redolent and rare,
And a nearness in the queerness,
To a belfry full of bats,
And a sadness in the madness
Of the danger of queer hats.
John Whitworth
My very first hat was a bowler
In a shade of republican green,
Till I lost two front teeth and a molar
For resembling a Fenian spalpeen.
I next chose a battered old trilby,
A casualty of the Cold War,
Since the press, who mistook me for Philby,
Were eternally camped by my door.
In reaction I wore a fedora,
But it left me bereft and alone.
The fedora, it seems, has an aura
Of criminal boss Al Capone.
I’ve tried out a fez, a ushanka,
A panama, homburg, pork pie,
Yet all the above have bred rancour.
I guess I’ll kiss headwear goodbye.
Basil Ransome-Davies
My dear, the structure that you’re wearing
Upon your head is very daring:
A veritable nonpareil
Of millinery art; the way
The cornucopia spills its fruit has
More than a hint of razzamatazz.
One must admire the audacious shape,
The inventiveness. I simply gape.
Superb for a garden party, say.
Now I know you’ll think me square — okay!
But there’s a danger here, I find.
The question you should bear in mind
Before you circumnavigate the course is,
Could it perhaps frighten the horses?
So, whether you choose cloche or wimple
For Ascot this year, keep it simple!
L.E. Betts
No. 2449: As the bishop said to the …
You are invited to provide an Alice in Wonderland-style conversation between two chess pieces, either in prose (maximum 120 words) or in verse (maximum 16 lines). Entries to ‘Competition No. 2449’ by 22 June.
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