Hat Haters and Beret Nipples

the-offending-beret

Dug this out of my hand-written journal and couldn’t resist posting it – it’s from about three years ago…

I went to the cinema wearing a beret last week; a nice comfortable cinema with tiered seating. It is a good beret, too, a head-hugging number in the Basque style, and it keeps my head warm in overly air-conditioned cinemas.

So, I sat in my seat and the adverts rolled. I slid into the sedate state of blankness that comes with ignoring the ads and beginning the process of suspending disbelief for the start of the film - a good, meditative state to be in. Then there was a coughing noise behind me. I ignored it and kept meditating. The cough became louder, began to creep into my personal space. I turned around.

There was a man sat behind me, glowering. I raised my eyebrows.

"Take of your hat," he demanded. I asked ‘why?’

"It's a head-hugging hat,” I told him. "Surely it's not obscuring your vision?"

"Take off your hat," he insisted.

"Move," I replied. "The cinema's half empty and I like my hat. It keeps my head warm."

"I'm not moving, I booked these seats," he grunted, as people started looking at us.

Then an attendant guided a couple of latecomers to their seats. The hat-hater accosted him, announcing in a sibilant, carrying whisper that I wouldn’t remove my hat. They had a whispered conversation; then the attendant, a nodding, obsequious boy, came and asked me to remove my hat.

"It's a head-hugging hat and is surely not obscuring his line of sight," I argued.

"It's the little bit at the top, sir. He doesn't like it."

I looked round at the hat hater.

"He's anti-beret nipple?" I asked loudly and incredulously. "How can anyone dislike beret-nipples?"

The audience looked round disapprovingly at me - the trailers had begun and they clearly wanted their fix of films they'll never need to see but will go to anyway and come out complaining that the best bits were all in the trailers.

"Arsehole," said the hat-hater.

"Please take off your hat or I'll have to ask you to leave," hissed the attendant.

"Because of a beret nipple?" I asked as I removed my beret.

The film was disappointing and the air conditioning exceptionally cold. My head grew chilly. Then the hat hater's mobile phone rang. He answered it.

"Yeah, I'm in the cinema," he brayed. "Yeah, the film's alright. They're just getting to the point where she goes to prison. Yeah. No, it's half way through..."

This went on for another 20 seconds or so. I said nothing, but put my beret back on and sat up as straight as one can in a cinema seat, wishing I had a top hat or a stetson. The film seemed so much better with a soundtrack of seething from the seat behind me...