If you want to get ahead...

It's a strange thing, but if I go out wearing a hat people stand in the street and stare. I don't wear anything outlandish, they're purely functional items to protect my pate from the elements. I may wear the black fedora, or the brown trilby, or the Panama hat. I have never once worn the Austrian Peculiar Coneheaded Dancers' hat out of doors (or indoors in this house, come to that). It's pouring down, I put on a coat and hat, walk down the road and the young people comment. I wouldn't mind but they all walk around dressed like extras from Mad Max or Pirates of the Caribbean.

"Hey mister! That's a funny hat!"

Shouted one specimen with his crotch round his ankles and a baseball cap on sideways. His mate, sporting two limp strands of hairy spagetthi hanging from his three-quarter crop shorts, laughed appreciatively.

It's good that three-quarters of my Poll Tax goes towards educating these idiots.