Consolation Prizes

In spent my teenage years in Washington D.C. and, like now, I often felt homesick and longed to go back to England.

I would lie in bed eating sweeties, reading my way through every Barbara Pym novel I could lay my hands on and imagine that when I finally grew old enough to go home on my own I would be magically transported to a postwar Britain where everyone was polite to one another, had a friendly vicar in a welcoming parish (even in London) and I would wear stockings and gloves to take tea at Lyons Corner House.

Terribly comforting, if not entirely accurate in 1987.

However, one of the abiding truisms is a piece of advice from one of the books – I forget which – in many ways they’re interchangeable, where the local doctor distractedly advises an older woman suffering from depression to

“Go out and buy yourself a new hat, dear”

This is, of course, horribly patronising and one wants to kick his unhelpful, patriarchal geriatric arse to kingdom come for not really listening or trying to help a patient.

But on the other hand, he’s got a point.

You know from my post the other day that I wasn’t exactly feeling tickety-boo.

So I’m going to buy a new hat.

From my incredibly talented friend Martina, who happens to be one of the sweetest most lovely women I know and is, astonishingly, a mother of three children who are nearly grown even though she’s roughly the same age as me.
(This is because she had them at about the same time as I was reading those Barbara Pym novels.)

I suggest, next time you feel low, feel wonderful, feel frisky, feel daring, or just want a nice hat, you get one too.

I’ve put a couple here, there are loads more on Martina’s website, and if you can’t see the BIG PICTURE at the top of the pretty one with butterflies, please click on the title of this post.
That’s my favourite!

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