The Hell of It All by Charlie Brooker

Author:Charlie Brooker
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Humor, Form, Modern, cookie429, Civilization, Extratorrents, Kat, Jokes & Riddles
ISBN: 9780571229574
Publisher: Faber & Faber, Limited
Published: 2009-11-01T22:24:49+00:00

Love and hat [23 June 2008]

Know what I’ve decided to hate this week? Hats. Yes, hats. Who do hats think they are? They contribute nothing to society, and don’t even display basic manners. Has a hat ever held a door open for you? No. It hasn’t.

While the rest of us work our fingers to the bone, sweating litres, trying to keep this crazy world going, hats just lounge around on top of our heads like they own the place. If you’re currently wearing a hat, take it off and stamp on it. Down with hats. All hats are wankers.

And never was there a more sickening display of archetypal hat arrogance than ladies’ day at Royal Ascot, which took place last week. The British press seems to view it as a harmless, tittersome annual tradition-cum-photo opportunity; a playful contest in which an assortment of leathery upper-class crones and willowy swan-necked debutantes compete to see who can wear the silliest piece of headgear.

Every year it’s the same thing: a 200-year-old countess you’ve never heard of, who closely resembles a Cruella De Vil mannequin assembled entirely from heavily wrinkled scrotal tissue that’s been soaked in tea for the past eight decades, attempts to draw attention away from her sagging neck – a droopy curtain of skin that hangs so low she has to repeatedly kick it out of her path as she crosses the royal compound – by balancing the millinery equivalent of Bilbao’s Guggenheim museum on her head, and winds up forming the centrepiece of a light-hearted photomontage in the centre of whatever newspaper you happen to be reading that day, accompanied by a picture of Princess Eugenie in a headdress, and some milky underfed heiress with the physique of a violin-playing mantis, wearing nothing but a diamante cornflake on each nipple and a hat made out of second-hand dentures or something equally avant-garde.

That’s how ladies’ day at Ascot comes across in the papers. Pro-Hattist propaganda, plain and simple. Tee hee hee, look at us hats – aren’t we just marvellous? Isn’t hat-wearing just peachy? Make more hats, make more hats. Come on, humans – make more hats. And we lap it up.

Honestly. It’s stomach-churning.

Still, such hatstravagance pales into minnow-like insignificance compared to some of the hats on display in the Tower of London. I went there somewhat randomly last week, accompanying a friend from out of town. And at first it was fun, playing tourist in my own city. I chortled at a beefeater. Gawped at a bit of old stone. Sniffed a few ravens. As you do.

And then we headed for the jewel house to see all the crowns and shit. We ambled in and immediately found ourselves part of a slow-moving caterpillar of sightseers, which shuffled through the vaults with hushed, painstaking reverence, past immense glass boxes displaying gaudy old tat of mind-mangling financial value.

There were gigantic golden spoons. Gigantic golden soup tureens. Royal gowns apparently woven from angel hair and diamond string. Countless sceptres and orbs. God knows

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