Although the extinct, car-sized salamanders whose vomit could melt your hair took my fancy for a few minutes this week, it were the Sparklemuffins what stole me heart. Until I found these incy wincy spiderlings crawling up my newsfeed I thought hats were the Devil’s work. I have an unattractively tiny, unhatworthy head, ask anyone, so except for my shoplifting sombrero I’ve never cared for the cloche or the cap. Back in the olden days in between sit-ins, and as penniless art meisters with normal sized heads, my louche leftie parents lounged in fez and fedora, drinking elderberry porter, Gauloised to the eyeballs and scatting to Gil Scott Heron, who was also partial to distinctive headwear, exuberant afro notwithstanding. The olds were tempted to sell me to the circus when it became clear my cranium would never get bigger than a peach. They twice resisted the urge, but maybe they shouldn’t have. I was never a shepherd or a nativity king, never a pony clubber or the captain of the Good Ship Lollipop. The wicked witch or the princess bride eluded the hatless tweensy me. I was never a cat in one that’s for damn sure. I was always the narrator. Or the tree. Where’s that sad violin music coming from?
I should be bitterer having lacked the correct head all these years, but these new found, new world little buggers turned my barebrained soul-frown upside down. Sparklemuffins don’t really have any heads at all either, just a hairy nub with four eyes in it. And what’s worse, and yet so snap, is they have massive great bums. Instead of whining like I always do, since we share identical physiognomy, they’ve made the best of both worlds and fashioned their enormous arses into rainbow spangled tam o’ shanters with a noggin-top stook of nano-dreads sprouting from the crown. It’s a Jah-worthy contortional miracle and a brave sartorial choice, and not a combination I would have thought to try. But somehow those little geniuses make it work. Plus, now they’re famous and have got their own YouTube channel. Like the Kardashians of the natural world, these big arsed, tiny brained arachnids have made it to the top of the spout just looking fabulous despite their physical anomalies, and if they can do it, so can I. Godammit, just because I’m a pinhead with a donk the size of a monster Triassic amphibian doesn’t mean I should deny my inner gay Rastafari fashion spider.
But getting my hat on requires me to leave the house. First of all it’s so hot out there. Second of all there’s the massively testicled bale of mange I call Coconut, the legally blind Baskervillian gatekeeper at the bottom of our stairs who takes no umbrage with anyone else except me. He’ll happily accept pats and treats and photo ops with tourists, but lies in wait just to scare the living shitsticks out of me on the way home from midnight badminton. Since his eyesight’s crap I thought spritzing myself with the Old Spice I banned Hubster from wearing, even though my Nanna gave it to him before she passed over, might trick that canny canine into thinking I was someone else. Clearly I stink harder than Old Spice: old Coconut’s got his choppers out the minute I turn the corner. Sometimes I think he’ll just sink his fangs gum deep into my calf and I’ll have to drag him round Aeon or meetings like he’s a jilted lover who can’t bear to see me leave. The only way to get him off my case is to pelt him with those candies people throw around to occupy mischievous spirit children. By the way people, of course they’ll go nuts on your appliances and mess with your taps with all that sugar! I’m doing everyone a favour. Still, sorry ghost kids.
Once I’m past my canine albatross there’s the short walk down Bag Snatch alley to our nearest hat HQ, Phsar Kandal. Although I live steps from CharmingVille’s undisputed premier head-centric shopping destination and go past most mornings on my way to drag Hubster out of the pub, I haven’t been inside for a year – not since the stick-limbed crone with the betel rosined toothpegs grabbed my lavish breasts and cackled “Thom! Thom!” to anyone who would listen. Which was everyone, because you can’t beat a massive white chick getting her boobs granhandled in a free, impromptu live comedy show right at your workplace by everybody’s favorite resident shamaness, especially if that workplace includes live fish writhing on the ground and boiling woks of oil and crickets just waiting for that hilarious, perhaps even terminal, pratfall to end ‘em all. No sir.
I was apprehensive in anticipation of this humiliating en-masse thigh slap. But the call of the brave Sparklemuffins was strong, and I wanted their copious hair. Their commitment to hats. Their joie d’ vivre. I craved their whole damn shebang.
“It’s getting sunny out there, and we live in the fucking Magic Kingdom of Hats, after all!” I said to myself out loud as I parkoured down the stairwell. Coconut, for once, was nowhere to be seen. Phsar Kandal, epicentre of all things madly cranial, here I and I come.