The adventures of a hat

This is a story which I suspect may be of no interest to anybody else. But I write my blog as much for myself as for whoever reads it, and it is one I wish to preserve and remember.

Given my propensity for losing scarves, hats and the like, it is perhaps surprising that I had managed to hold on to this hat for a remarkably long time, having been given it when we were in Corrymeela, way back in 2012. (It makes its first blog appearance here!)

I remember being very touched at the time. The hat was a gift from one of the groups we had supported. It was notable because while they bought hats for both of us, the two volunteers who worked with them, we were quite different in character and the two different hats were a very good match for each of us. It showed, I thought, an attentiveness to our different identities and a thoughtfulness to the choice. 

Plus, I just really liked it! It had certainly had a lot of wear, and has been a good many places in the ten years that followed. 

Until I lost it, back in February 2023. I thought I knew when, and figured I had left it on a bus or train that day. I was kind of sad, but resigned to not seeing it again.

I accepted it was time to get a new hat, but as winter was, hopefully, reaching its end, decided there was no immediate rush to do so.

Several months later, in June, I was back at a meeting with those I had been with that day, and was greeted with someone telling me they had my hat, but despite the best of intentions, had forgotten to bring it with them. Turns out I had not left it on the train, but at the meeting and someone had picked it up, recognised it as mine, and held on to it until they saw me again. These are not people I meet often or know well, and I was again touched that someone had identified it as mine, and intentionally kept it for me. 

I didn't mind that I wasn't to be reunited that day, it was, apart form anything else, definitely not bobble hat season, but I confess to a little spark of joy that it was not, in fact, after all, lost for good. 

She said she would post it. More months passed before we met again, some time in autumn / winter 2023 but online this time, and a few messages exchanged in the chat revealed she had indeed posted it, but that it had never arrived. Lost in the post. She felt guilty, I told her not to. It was a shame, especially after I'd had my hopes of seeing it again raised, but really not that big a deal. It seems I wasn't meant to be reunited with my hat after all.

I accepted, again, it was time to get a new hat. 

Jump forward a whole year to this week and the hat saga's happy ending. 

Earlier in the week a colleague had let me know of a parcel addressed to me that had arrived, which she offered to bring along to our meeting. I had really no idea what it could be, having come to an address we no longer use, and I was certainly intrigued. 

And there it was my long-lost hat, plus two others, with a note explaining the rest of the story. 

After the original hat going missing, she had, very generously, bought me a replacement (well two actually) but then in the interim, my 'lost in the post' hat had eventually found its way back to her, and she had posted all three on to me, and this time they made it. Almost two years after losing it, my hat and I are together again.

Just in time for winter. 

Having had to accept, twice, that my hat was lost for ever, it brought a broad smile to my face to be reunited with it after all this time.

I will be trying to take good care of it from now on and will do my best not to leave it behind anywhere else!