if the cap fits

Speaking of hats, as we were, reminds me that my current gardening and emergency going-outside-to-do-stuff hat that hangs by the back door is the black baseball cap that Doug kindly provided for me for my stag weekend back in May 2011. The reason it's been relegated to this instead of, say, golf, is that it carries a bespoke design of Doug's own devising. See for yourself:

In case you can't make it out, what we've got here is a grainy reproduction of this photograph from 2007 (with Hazel cropped out) with the following legend added:

ASK ME: "What's the difference between peanut butter and jam?"

While wearing this (as I was obliged to do) on our drinking expedition into Trecastle, what I was obliged to say in the event of anyone taking the bait and asking me the question was as follows:

"Well....I can't PEANUT BUTTER my COCK up your ARSE."

- which, I think you'll agree, is both punningly amusing and a bit threateningly rapey at the same time.

This is not the first piece of ridiculous headgear I have ever sported, though, far from it. Here's a picture of me and Ray up near the summit of Blencathra in the Lake District in what my records say was late 2003. Note that the utterly ludicrous fleecy hat that I'm wearing makes Ray's fluorescent orange one look almost sensible by comparison. It was (and is, since I still have it) actually a pretty decent fleecy mountain hat, the only drawback being that the enormous surface area meant that it soaked up quite a bit of water in wet conditions, which made it rather heavy after a while.