Brimful of Hats – 16/11/2024

‘My shoes are worn out,’ Natalia Ginzburg writes in her essay collection, The Little Virtues, ‘and the friend I live with at the moment also has worn-out shoes. When we are together we often talk about shoes. If I talk about the time when I shall be an old, famous writer, she immediately asks me ‘What shoes will you wear?’ Then I say I shall have shoes made of green suede with a big gold buckle on one side.’

During the German occupation in Rome, Ginzburg had only one pair of shoes. She learned to live with worn-out shoes. She wonders about her children, ‘what kind of men will they be? I mean, what kind of shoes will they have when they are men?’

In Olga Tokarczuk’s The Empusium the main character is introduced through his left shoe, marked as it is, then the right, even shabbier: ‘for a moment the shoes stand still, indecisively, but then the left one advances.’ Other characters are seen from under the table. A pair of immaculate boots touches at the toes, childishly. Thick-socked feet slip off their coffin-like clogs. One of a pair of Oxfords raps against the floor, unrhythmically. Women are perceived through their hats. A pair seen always together arrive at a funeral in dark headgear resembling saucepans. Another becomes ‘Mrs Large Hat’ for the young man who is deeply affected by her.

A woman who perseveres even as the Roman rains descend, with squelching, soft soles. A character whose right shoe is consistently more scuffed than the left. A grown man who releases his feet when no one can see.

The aspiring princess squeezes her foot into the glass slipper. The red shoes force the girl to dance forever. The imprisoned man is driven to make the same shoe again and again. The painter connects with the disgruntled widower over the excellence of his boots.

What sort of person dons this hat on a hot day? Who left these shoes behind, pointing towards the door? Why was this passed from father to son and that thrown away instead of repaired?

Shoes and hats. Disguises or exposures. Sartorial choices mix with moral ones. Fairytales with history.

In Tessa Hadley’s The Party, Evelyn changes her wellington boots for ballet pumps – impractical in the driving rain but she does not mind – and makes her way to a party. Vincent greets her, wearing a soft black felt hat like Augustus John though this is not enough to make him attractive. The party and the rest of the weekend unfold against the backdrop of postwar Bristol – buildings bombed, jazz thriving and profiteers emerging – as Evelyn and her sister meet with new people and experiences.

Another short and wintry treat comes in the form of Killing Time by Alan Bennett. Mrs McBryde considers Hill Topp House something of a cut above other homes for the elderly. She alters the waiting list, happy to accept an Ambrose or a Winifred over a Charlene. She will not repeat the experience of a Kevin who could not do up his shoelaces. The threat of demotion to Low Moor hangs over the residents, not quite keeping them in check. The dialogue will have you reading aloud amid snorts of laughter, the window cleaner who provides other services may scandalise you, delightedly, and there are surprises to come between unfinished jigsaws.

Talking of Winifreds, quite how Winnie the Witch manages the high jump without squashing her pointed hat is a sight to be seen in Winnie and Wilbur: The Witches’ Sports Day by Valerie Thomas, illustrated by Korky Paul. She has at least switched her curly-toed shoes for trainers, ahead of the egg and spoon race.

Meanwhile Milo has even bigger hat problems: he cannot pull a rabbit out of his. This would be fine, even convenient, if he only wanted to wear the hat but he has a show to perform. Fortunately, a rather splendid bear comes to his aid in Milo’s Hat Trick by Jon Agee.

The Knights of the Round Table might think they are the good guys but their behaviour suggests otherwise to The Untameables of Claire Pollard’s imagining. Elva and Roan must don helmets and race the knights in a quest for the Holy Grail. On their way they meet elves in acorn-hats and a rather sozzled Lady of Shalott and enjoy a soft bed for the night inside a giant’s fluffy slippers. The names are superb. A slug called Glop. Pocket the Goat. That’s not an order.  

You’ll have to come in to gaze at all the shoes and hats featuring in great style in Nursery Rhymes by Robert Lacey, illustrated by Ben Coppin, though there is a sneak preview here. A book to be cherished and passed down the generations.

Meanwhile The Lost Fairy Tales by Isabel Otter, illustrated by Ana Sender offers some lesser-known stories: Aurora and the Giants features a magical cap, The Black Bull a pair of spiked iron shoes and Goddess of the Sun the most spectacular headdress.

Patrick McGuinness’s poetry collection, Blood Feather, is marked by things that are no longer there, including his mother, buildings, and his poems, his words lifting away from the page. In ‘The Noises Things Make When They Leave,’ the lines resound with ‘the clip of heels on pavements, the suitcases on rubber wheels… There are so many ways of going yet you stay.’

Suad Aldarra also writes of the poignancy of things leaving and left behind in I Don’t Want to Talk About Home as she packs one bag and forsakes the rest in Syria. Growing up as a foreigner in Saudi Arabia, Aldarra longed for her homeland, dreaming of the vibrant streets of Damascus. Against her parents’ wishes she moved there until war forced her to leave. More than a decade later she still longs for this place, still carries it within while unable to walk there.

To end once again with Deborah Levy, who writes in Things I Don’t Want to Know about leaving her childhood home in South Africa and wandering the strange world of London barefoot. Perhaps as a result, shoes are laced through her novels and essays. In The Position of Spoons, she describes buying her first pair of brothel creepers: ‘[I] knew I would never wear them with socks. It has always been very clear to me that men and women who wear shoes without socks are destined to become my friends and lovers. These sockless people have a kind of abandon in their body. They walk with zip.’  

Hats, shoes, even socks are all welcome at our poetry performance and party next Thursday. We look forward to seeing you there.

May your weekend bring a spring to your well-shod step; may your hat tell the story you wish it to,
Lizzie  

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