A Post-Midsummer Night's Dream.

It rained quite heavily for most of the time when I was in Ashbourne yesterday, so I did something I don’t normally do: I wore a cap while walking around the town. It occurred to me that headwear can greatly alter a person’s appearance, and so I thought:

If some young woman should approach me – being fair of face, lissom of form, quiet and well modulated of speech, graceful of demeanour, and possessed of eyes that are at once giving and compassionate, yet imbued with strength and feminine assertiveness (roughly speaking, of course; I do know one who fits the description perfectly but she doesn’t talk to me any more) – and say: ‘Oh, my good sir, I have been regarding you with much admiration from afar. My little form shivers at the sight of your upright bearing. My little heart – for we ladies have such little hearts – beats with the rapidity of a humming bird’s wing when I regard your handsome and manly visage. My little breast – oh what a cross it is to bear, being graced or cursed (as you will) with a little woman’s breast – heaves uncontrollably when I see your eyes, so full of sensitivity and intelligence, observing the human condition as you pass by its relentless flow. My little legs quiver like…like… that brown stuff you get at the bottom of a bowl of beef dripping, you know… when I hear the dulcet tone of your voice as you grace some fortunate bystander with an erudite and heartening remark, their life forever enriched by your kindness. I have to tell you, gracious sir, that I am at the end of my tether. My unworthy life has become devoid of meaning and purpose without the beauty of your esteemed presence to give it value. Would you grant me that presence? Will you be mine tonight?’

And I would have to say: ‘You do realise I’ll look different when I take my hat off?’

This is somebody else

wearing my hat... 

... and this was my stalker