When I was a Young Jean, I used to read the articles in women’s magazines that instructed one how to disguise figure flaws through artful fashion choices. There were directions for how to proceed if you were top-heavy, bottom-heavy, unacceptably thin, overweight, short-legged, long-legged, knocked-kneed, gap-toothed. There was nothing suggested with regards to fashion fixes for women with enormous heads. I creased my enormous brow in consternation.
And that crease returned today, when I tried to go hat shopping. You see, I am going to my first Real English Wedding next weekend; that is, a wedding that I do not have to get on a plane to attend. I am very excited to see my friends pledge their undying love to each other, but I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I am also excited to wear a Real English Wedding outfit. Which is why I tried, and failed, to buy a hat, only to be reminded that I have an unacceptably enormous head, the likes of which no John Lewis milliner has ever contended with.
My head is so enormous that when I was an infant, the doctor thought that it might be pathological; so enormous that my grandfather, an optometrist with about 60 years experience, remarked that the space between my pupils is a larger space than that he’d ever encountered in his career. My head is so large that when I graduated from university, I had to carry, rather than wear, my mortarboard. It is a hard life, the only bright spot being that I have more than once won a head-measurement competition. Then again, most people probably never feel the need to have head-measurement competitions as they’ve got nothing to prove.
In denial, in hope, I tried and tried to batten various confections of straw and fake feathers on to my head today. But it failed. And thus, I am once again foiled by mein kopf: next Saturday, I will be cheerfully sporting a dress at this wedding that might best be described as something that Jackie O might wear to a garden party in Shoreditch, but I will not be hatted, and thus my dreams of sporting a Real English Wedding outfit will never - quite - come true.
(NB: Last year’s fascinator, worn to weddings in Denmark and New York, was awesome, but sadly my personal milliner has relocated to Australia.)
