Whilst on holiday this Easter with my folks and kids at Warburton in the Yarra Valley the silly hat made an appearance. This has long been a theme in my life, has it been in yours or perhaps you are more of a cool hat kinda person?

It started with my parents, it always does, doesn’t it? My Dad would generally be sporting a floppy wide brimmed hat for his boat. I say for his boat as if this is some kind of excuse oh no, that was just one silly hat of many, there was his silly camping hat, very similar in fact to the boat hat just a slightly different shade of khaki and of course his summer hat. Then one Christmas to top all silly hats, someone bought him the hat with the propeller on the top, luckily even he thought that was way too silly!

My next silly hat encounter was my mums silly floppy white summer hat, I have a memory of her and her four sisters all wearing the same silly white hats on a summer day in my Nans Garden. I might have made that up as a memory or it might have been true. But I can assure you that they all looked very silly!

My Sunday school teachers had also bought the same white floppy summer hats and on our trip to Seaton in Devon they all proudly wore them every day. Somehow because they were Sunday School teachers this didn’t calculate to silly, I’m not sure why? What was silly was that I had forgotten my swimsuit and so one of the teachers (all over 50) had lent me hers. At around nine years old I though it strange that this very flowery swimsuit had some kind of chest structure of which I had nothing to fill it with.  It didn’t stop me swimming for a good long way, I think probably the longest swim of my life. Maybe I was simply trying to get away from these silly white hat wearing ladies or perhaps I just didn’t want to get out of the water wearing the oversized swimming suit with the huge hollow pointy things in front. Silly it would seem I did not yet want to embrace!

And so, this Easter as I wandered back up the muddy bank from the rampaging river in Warby the kids were laughing their heads off at me, it was my turn to wear the silly hat. The horrible truth is I don’t think it is a silly hat, I think it’s a lovely hat, in fact it’s my favourite hat! However, I am more than happy to be silly if it makes anyone laugh or even smile. Yes, I have turned into my parents, inevitable, I guess!

Some people never look silly in a hat they look like they were born with one on their head. The Australian Akubra for example is a serious hat and can look oh so handsome, not silly at all! One day I might just be cool enough to wear one.