Need not bother about a hat

Travelling lighter than usual

When I stepped out of my home with 3 suitcases and many other things just a day over 3 weeks ago, I had the feeling I had forgotten something, but had no time to think of what it might be.

There was an Uber cab waiting to convey me to the airport and for the strain of trying to travel light, which I rarely do even as I worked hard at accomplishing that goal with much sleeplessly tired effort, I had for my early flight not slept overnight.

Wherever I laid that hat

On getting to the airport, I retrieved a trolley with difficulty, had my suitcases loaded on and made for the terminal when I realised what I had forgotten my hat, my straw grass hat which works well for the summer days, though it might have been useless for the winter days of Cape Town.

What I could not decide on was whether I had left my hat on the rack at home or in the Uber cab. I had the good feeling it was at home, that in my apparent rush to leave at the witching hour of just after 3:00 AM, I had left home quite unusually without a head covering.

It could have bothered me if I did forget the hat in the cab, but it was one of those instances where I felt either way, I’ll deal with it when I get back. On occasion, I had the feeling to order a replacement because I got the hat about 7 years ago and it was ordered on Amazon from Germany. A voice whispered in me, not to jump to that conclusion.

It really did not matter

Having the choice of asking my house sitter to check and confirm whether my hat was on hat rack did occur to me, but I left it at that. I had another 7 or 8 hats in my baggage for my destination, the world was not going to end because of a straw hat.

When I returned last Tuesday, it was not the first thing I checked as that was not on my mind, one of my other hats was already adorning my bald head. As I took it off to hang on the hat rack, I noticed the straw hat. It was at home, all along.

It is funny how the foregoing might have served as an introduction to a piece about how we bother ourselves about little things and overcompensate to remediate for certain failings or inadequacies. In fact, I did see a few straw hats in Cape Town, I just ignored the draw to try any of them on. I was having a good time and that is all that mattered.

Thought Picnic: The convenience of what we choose to remember

Games of the memory

It is easy for others to forget or misremember things when things are remembered, they could also be remembered differently from how events occurred, where things happened, and who was involved.

Too frequently, we are blindsided by the misremembered or forgotten, though whether that is deliberate or inadvertent, one cannot say in the purity of innocence or the sleight of chicanery.

With one’s parents this can be interesting, the charges you want to lay against them, they would rather have forgotten or swear never happened, whilst the accusation they level against you they expect to be a perfect recall of memory, unfailing and playing back like film. Maybe, this is where one learns forgiveness because it feels like taking poison oneself and expecting the other person to be affected.

Feelings of the memory

The wrongly accepted canard is that the child by the passage of time and the influence of life soon forgets totally and never recalls, if ever. That is rarely the case, things are left in the recesses of memory and certain triggers lift them out of the archives of the mind to present new realisation and probably in new contexts too.

Many of these things might not appear in my blogs but have come up in conversation with others, much at the risk of cynicism that subterfuge is at play. What I do is note them down for the broader narrative of the story that the spectrum of the best to the worst is usually represented in relationships.

That way we have been wronged by those we love as much as we have been loved by those we wronged. Each has their own perspective, and no one owes the other a convincing story; most of the time, it is the words of Maya Angelou that ring true, “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” It works both ways, especially in the words of our kindred.

Thought Picnic: Of habits and habitué

The difference is in the same

I cannot help being a creature of habit, much I seek adventure, I have a tendency to get comfortable with people, places, events, things and ideas. I do make the effort to break away from the mundane and the routine, but some things might just remain the same.

Returning to the same places where I went on holiday because the memories are wonderful and the sense of being and feeling was more than palpable if the hotel has been exemplary, it is unlikely that I will consider an alternative, the familiar loses peculiarity and becomes natural. I could say the same for restaurants and much else, I become a habitué.

I do not easily make friends, but the ones I do make, endure for decades, it is just the nature of who I am, I am quiet, reserved, introverted and in some ways conservative, though you won’t see me and think that.

The Left of mind, a right of loss

Then, when I was in Edinburgh, having been away from home for a week, checked out in the morning and went to work before going to the station to board a train back home. It was when I got back home that I realised I might have left two things in my hotel room.

A can of Brut Original Deodorant and a bottle of Hugo Boss Number One Eau de Toilette, the former I have used for almost 30 years, considering it came on the market in the year of my birth and if my memory serves me right, it used to be in my dad’s grooming kit. The latter I have used for nigh on 23 years, I have not been persuaded of any other deodorant or fragrance.

Now, these are no more in the shops, I must order Brut by bulk from Amazon, Hugo Boss, however, is a strange one, the carton says it was made in the UK, but no UK shop stocks the item. Bizarrely, I am only able to get this when I pass through the Charles de Gaulle airport duty-free shop in Paris and it is not getting any cheaper.

Beating myself harder than with a rod

So, you could imagine my sense of loss when a barely used bottle of Hugo Boss was inadvertently left in a hotel room and I had no inkling as to how to retrieve it. Like gloves, I always have at least one spare bottle to hand, but imagine my utter discomfiture when on returning from a trip to London, I could neither find another pair of these fanciful smell repellents.

I searched all bags, high and low, I could not for the life of me think of how I might have lost them again. For weeks, I was resigned to the fact that I had been a second time careless and had relapsed into mental flagellation occasioning regret.

At one time I had decided I would not more travel with them if I could not trust myself to keep them and return with them.

Redemption of self and soul

Then, a few days ago as I was rifling through my new trolley case for my laptops and work materials, I happened upon the zipped-up cavity where I had stored a power bank and there also was the can of Brut and a bottle of Hugo Boss.

I had neither lost nor misplaced them, I just did not remember they were there. I promptly forgave myself, thought about my possibly fading mental acuity and decided, the world is not lost, these things happen. The habit that has been going on for almost a lifetime serves its purpose, though year on year, I have watched the price of Hugo Boss rise by at least 15%, at such prices, one cannot afford to be careless or even carefree.

To each one his own and thankfully Hugo Boss Number One stands out as a class ahead of the rest because celebrity piss water flooded the shelves of perfumeries that if you venture into such shop floors, your departure will be greeted with a vapour trail of pongy effluent that polite company would rather don a gas mask than suggest you reek of the unmentionable.

To retain certain habits, you have to careful, mindful and resourceful, it is the only way to retain a sense of wellbeing and sanity.