Hats and Boots

I had a striped pull-on hat that I wore every day. One of my cats had eaten a hole in the top of it which I eventually repaired.
It was the perfect hat; I think perhaps I had bought it in Scotland a long time ago and it was meant to be a fisherman's hat. It was my friend.
I left it on a DLR train on between Stratford and King George V stations when I was taking a student to introduce them to a placement provider, and I've had no luck with the TFL Lost Property Office so I guess it's gone.
Every time I wore it a stranger would say 'I like your hat'. The stranger rarely looked like the sort of person who would wear a pull-on stripy hat, but they liked it anyway so there must have been something about it.
I miss my hat.
I've still got my boots though. They are a pair of oxblood Dr Marten's monkey boots and they have a similar affect on people. I went to get my hair cut and the hairdresser who was hairdressing the man sitting next to me couldn't take his eyes off them. 'Where did you get those?' he wanted to know. I imagined him rushing home and doing an internet search as soon as he got back.
Some drunken builders fell in love with them on the tube on the way home yesterday. English was not their first language, but they managed to conjure up an admiring sentence and I stomped home with a smile on my face. Now if I could only get my hat back...