It's hat's off to Melania and Zorro
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It's hat's off to Melania and Zorro

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There has been plenty of heavy stuff coming out of the White House this week, or as the BBC put it "Trump comes out swinging.'' For the sake of harmony PostScript will stick to the lighter side of what has been a most extraordinary week.

The highlight of Donald Trump's inaugural was undoubtedly Melania's hat, a large boater that almost hid her face. According to our chapeau correspondent it bore a close similarity to the sombrero cordobes worn by the dynamic fictional vigilante Zorro. Whatever, it certainly made an impact and even forced her husband to settle for an "air kiss" because the wide brim got in the way of the intended peck on the cheek.

America's First Lady would certainly be at home at any future British Royal function where princesses, duchesses, dames and ladies seem to vie for who can come up with the weirdest creations. A good example of this was the Harry & Meghan wedding at Windsor Castle a few years ago. There hadn't been such a fanciful display of female headgear since My Fair Lady. Some of the hats adopted such strange angles it looked like they had crash-landed on their respective aristocratic noggins.

It may surprise some that there was a brief period in Thailand when men and women were ordered to wear Western-style hats. It was just before World War II when Plaek Phibunsonkhram was prime minister. He apparently felt that Western attire would make the people look more modern and he particularly encouraged the wearing of bowler hats, not the most practical headwear in the tropical heat. Fortunately the hat-wearing had only a limited appeal as did the wearing of gloves for women.

On song

All this talk of hats has got the old music hall song Where Did You Get That Hat? whizzing around my brain. The song, which was written back in the late 19th century, was a huge success and contributed to making the wearing of hats popular. It's a jolly ditty and no doubt the First Lady would enjoy the chorus:

"Where did you get that hat? /Where did you get that tile?/ Isn't it a nobby one and just the proper style?/I should like to have one just the same as that/Wherever' I go they shout 'hello'/ where did you get that hat?"

I should point out that the word 'tile' is Scottish slang for hat, while 'nobby' means stylish or chic.

Seismic signature

President Trump has signed so many documents since the inaugural his writing hand must be feeling the strain. It got me wondering if he manages to keep each signature exactly the same or if he experiences the occasional wobble. Mr Trump has quite a distinctive signature which can be interpreted in whatever way you want, although it has been frequently likened to a seismograph reading of an earthquake. It's a signature that looks like it might leap off the page and attack you.

I regret that my own signature is very erratic and something of a sorry scrawl. In fact more often than not it deteriorates into an indistinguishable squiggly mess, or as a teacher once observed, like a "trail of a drunken spider". One consolation is that I read somewhere that the late US President John F Kennedy's signature changed virtually every time he signed anything. So at least I am in distinguished company. Mind you, he was called upon to sign around 100 documents a day while I wouldn't match that in a year.

Gulf news

Back in the early 1960s I remember watching Lonnie Donegan and his skiffle group on the BBC singing Battle of New Orleans, a cover version of the American hit by Johnny Horton. The lyrics related to the events in 1814/15 leading up to the famous battle in which the British forces lost with heavy casualties.

Despite the subject matter it is a very catchy song and became a No 1 hit for Horton in the US and No 2 for Donegan in the UK.

The chorus went as follows: "We fired our guns and the British kept a comin'/There wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago/We fired once more and they began to runnin'/ On down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico".

Somehow it wouldn't sound right if it was "Gulf of America". It doesn't rhyme for a start.

F1 dreams

I must admit to almost choking over my morning muesli upon reading a proposal that the traffic-clogged Vibhavadi Rangsit Road is regarded as the best location in Bangkok to hold a Formula One race. It was one of those news stories that make you immediately check the date to make sure it wasn't April 1.

It is certainly hard to imagine F1 Ferraris, Mercedes and McLarens thundering through the city at 200mph. Furthermore, you could almost certainly guarantee a stray tuk-tuk performing a U-turn would get in the way somewhere along the route.

Adding to the head-scratching was the suggestion this area could be transformed into a state-of-the art race track and be ready by 2027. Considering discussion over the possibility of Thailand hosting an F1 event have been rambling on for more than for 15 years the idea that it could all suddenly be done and dusted in the next two years seems rather fanciful to say the least.


Contact PostScript via email at oldcrutch@hotmail.com

Roger Crutchley

Bangkok Post columnist

A long time popular Bangkok Post columnist. In 1994 he won the Ayumongkol Literary Award. For many years he was Sports Editor at the Bangkok Post.

Email : oldcrutch@gmail.com

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