Help Yourself Why Don't You? :rolleyes:

[RondoHatton]

They would need a necktie for a tourniquet.

:Western morés were mentioned. However, there is a Western tradition that allows the amputation of neckties in certain eating/drinking places. These end up festooning the ceiling. How do we feel about that?

No western tradition I know of allows for that! Maybe some marketing slob's idea of a phoney casual atmosphere.
"We" had better be notified of such "tradition" before entering. If some "flair" server comes at me with a pair of scissors, I'll be producing a blade of my own and help him off with something, either grown or sewn onto him.

 

[ablearrow]

Congratulations, You seem to be the first to have figured out that when a woman (any woman) puts your hat on her head, she is flirting with you!

I know what she was doing, but my better half was with me!

 

[Jovan]

I'd still be a little miffed if a lady I didn't know did that. My friends could probably get away with it.

 

[Edward]

Ah, friend, that's the difference between a hat dilettante like me and a real hat person like yourself.

Hey, well, don't be folled by the relatively high post count in a short space of time - I'm still a real newbie in this game!

When I first started buying honest-to-goodness hats, the first ones I got were a Bailey porkpie and a Beaver Brand homburg. It was drilled into me that I was never to pick them up by their crowns, and that I was never to set them down on their brims.

Some years and an unjustifiable number of other hats later, I habitually lie all my hats down on their crowns. If it's got a sweatband, it's "upside down." There's a drawer just across the room here full of newsboy caps and such. They're all upside down. Even the Greek fisherman's cap bought during the Carter Administration that's been worn so many times it's an embarrassment to wear.

Funnily enough, I habitually lay a soft cap down inside facing up when I'm storing them as well. It's just my more formal hats that go in the brims. Well, apart from the top hats, which I've been informed need stored on their top to protect the brim shape.

The only hat that's resting on its brim is a German-made loden hunting hat -- a dreispitze or, as some might say, a Pinocchio hat. If I put that one down on its crown, it tends to right itself, not unlike a gyroscope. But every time I do lie it down, I instinctively do so crown-down first, then do a double-take, and finally set it down more sensibly, on its brim.

lol It's funny what force of habit makes us do, isn't it?

That you actually THINK before you set your hat down is a wonderful thing. But I'm just a hat-dabbler, unable to set down my hats in anything but a routine, rote manner.

Oh, I'm just horrendously anally retentive about most things - that's a chracter trait that carries over to my hats as well.

Spot on! The actual place was the bus terminus just across St. James Ditch from the Valletta city gate. One day while waiting for that bus, I snapped its picture.

I know exactly where you mean!

My favorite part of Malta was the smaller island of Gozo. All of Malta is nice, though. Fewer tourists visit there than the place merits. Tiny as it is, two weeks wasn't long enough to see all the things there worth seeing.

Gozo was great. One of my former students who also attended the conference drove a bunch of us there (via the ferry, obviously!). We climbed to the vantage point round the cathdral that offers views of the whole island, great view. It happened to be Palm Sunday we were there, so we also saw part of the Palm Sunday parade, with the floats. Beautifully carved sculptures on that - and surprisingly brutal for those of us who have grown up with religious iconography that cleans up the reality of crucifixition an awful lot, more along the bloodless lines of Dali's Jesus of St John of the Cross.

I only really had three days post conference to get around - on the advice of the locals, I spent one in Valetta, one on Gozo, and the last in Mdina. Mdina was great, I really enjoyed just wandering around the little back alleys of that town.

One thing that sticks in my mind about Malta is that they still eat rabbit much more commonly than do we in the UK. I should hope that the hat industry sources much of its rabbit fur from places where this is common - if not, it should - I'm of a mind that if we are going to exploit a natural resource such as an animal, we should really be making as much of an effort as we can to ensure that we waste as little as possible. Not the case in practice all too often, I'm sure, but still, I wish it was.

 

[Jovan]

If I get the hat I'm eyeing... no one, I mean NO ONE will be touching it besides me.

 

[tandmark]

Hello again,

Hey, well, don't be folled by the relatively high post count in a short space of time - I'm still a real newbie in this game!

[huh] Most of us are newbies here, from what I can tell. We share what we know, or try to puzzle things out, so that the next guy can stand on our shoulders, as it were. It's a social activity, really, that doesn't work well when folks get too ego-involved in having the definitive word on anything.

Not only is that sort of thing bad for the process of discussion, it's also -- to use an old-fashioned term -- un-gentlemanly.

So it's not that I was fooled by your post count. It's that I was attending to the ways in which your manner of handling your hats has advantages over my own.

Not that I intend to change my own habit. lol

I only really had three days post conference to get around - on the advice of the locals, I spent one in Valetta, one on Gozo, and the last in Mdina. Mdina was great, I really enjoyed just wandering around the little back alleys of that town.

Those locals gave you some great advice! Gozo runs at a somewhat slower pace, though. Hard to "do" Gozo in a single day as a result.

I spent hours one night on the Gozo ferry docks (Cirkewwa and Mgarr), waiting for the taxis to start running again, watching rats play among the huge stones of the breakwater, listening to the locals whooping it up in the local taverns. Away off to the east, fireworks kept shooting heaven-wards from a late-season festa for some village patron saint. Leaned against a shuttered fish & chips stand in Mgarr and fanned myself with my hat (a gambler-style straw hat from Berkeley Hats, sez me in hopes of seeming a bit more on-topic) to stay awake, until a troop of noisy Norwegian rock climbers kindly rescued me at 5AM by letting me share their private hired car all the way into charming Marsalforn.

Kinda sounds like a romantic adventure now, but at the time it was an utter drag.

Cheers,
Mark

 

[Twitch]

I wouldn't mind if someone tries my hat. I've encouraged it on occassion to give the person an idea of size comparison to my 7 and if there's a mirror or glass near, to see how he looks in hopes he'll be the next Fedora Lounger.

 

[Feraud]

If I get the hat I'm eyeing... no one, I mean NO ONE will be touching it besides me.

At that price you had better glue it to your head.