Friday, October 15, 2010
More than just a hat stand
Keats was berating Chapman one evening on account of his appearance. "It ill behooves men of both our status and position in society to be seen in such states of deshabillment: you look", he opined, "like the wreck of the Hesperus". In particular he took issue with Chapman's hat. "That...thing", he said, "beggars belief. The arse", he noted, "is gone out of the elbow of it years ago; it's on it's last legs, indeed has surpassed them. It is, in short, an ex-hat".
Chapman balked at the suggestion he should be rid of the foul piece of apparel. He waxed lyrical about how he and the hat had been such constant companions over the years, how it had sheltered his bonce through both fair weather and foul, and how it was more a part of him than many of his bodily appendages, how it would be such a wrench to be parted from such a dear friend, never mind to simply cast it aside now he has spent it's usage. "If only", he said, waxing whimsical, "there were some place, a land, fair and bright, that my hat could retire to; a kindly home, a state for the dispossessed hats of the world, to unite, to live out their final days in peace and harmony....."
Keats noted that if such a place did exist that it would probably, owing to the many varieties of hats demanding their own say in it's affairs, be constituted as a Fedoration. Chapman binned the offending rag.
# posted by Flann O'Brien @ 1:08 AM 
