In Competition No. 2446 you were invited to provide a poem with the title of ‘The Danger of Queer Hats’. There are one or two queer hats in literature, like the one worn by Lear’s Old Man in the Kingdom of Tess, which was ‘a loaf of brown bread, in the middle of which he inserted his head’; or the one shared by Chesterton’s two friends who companionably smoked the same cigar underneath it. Dangerous hats are a different matter. Apart from some desperate puns — ‘bodyline bowlers’ and ‘poisonous berets’ — your hats were odd rather than lethal except for Shirley Curran’s judge’s black cap, ‘the real one to dread,/ For the day that he dons it he tells you, “You’re dead.”’
The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each. (It is amusing to see Nelson dying twice in a fortnight.) The bonus fiver is J.H. Smith’s.
Mrs Melissa Antimacassar
Loved different coverings for her head.
Sometimes on Sundays she would venture
Eponymously draped to church,
If someone guided her.
Nor could she see very much from within
Her many styles of cardboard box.
But when, as with the black biscuit tin,
Her husband contrived two eyeholes,
It frightened the children.
(That vase, too, was a very bad mistake:
She forgot to empty the water out.)
Best was the crimson lampshade;
Then Melissa lit up the town.
Worst, and last, was when she made
Do with a plastic bag.
J.H. Smith
Two ladies into retro chic
Discovered in a posh boutique
A pair of grand Edwardian hats —
Originals, and not ersatz.
The milliner had wrought with care.
A duchess would be proud to wear
The fruit of such exquisite skills:
A fantasy of pheasant quills.
Two hats to die for, quite unique.
The ladies didn’t need to speak
Or weigh the issue long and hard.
Each scrambled for her credit card.
The
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