Mad Hatters

Today I went wedding-hat-shopping with Elle and my ma-in-law. That is, Elle didn't want to buy a wedding hat because she's having something called diamond spirals threaded in her hair (no veil - no ta-ra-ra - no flowers - no hat), and I didn't want to buy a hat because I'm having a fascinator. So we actually just went shopping for ma-in-law's wedding hat.

I'll cut the whole boring thing short here by saying we didn't find one. Not one. Clearly not a good time to look for wedding hats - the only hats we found were Santa ones or ones with flashing antlers and although they would look quite amusing on ma-in-law I don't think she'd see the funny side. Having exhausted Oxford's hat shops we're going to try Reading and Newbury. After Christmas.

Ma-in-law is wearing red to the wedding. I think we're all wearing red except Elle. We'll look like Arsenal Ladies Second Eleven. Ma-in-law wanted a frou-frou cartwheel hat in black and red. She's quite short and Elle and I did say we thought a big hat would make her look like a mushroom. Fortunately she's a bit deaf too.

I tried on some fascinators. Couldn't afford them because they were Jasper Conran and therefore about three hundred quid a feather, but it was nice to see what they'd look like. Once she'd stopped laughing, Elle took pictures on her mobile phone to send back to The Doctor because she said I looked like an electrocuted emu. As this wasn't the look I was aiming for I put them back. I may re-think the fascinator. Maybe fascinators aren't for people like me who tend to look a lot like Benny Hill.

There was a funny moment in Debenhams (Debenhams has been "modernised" recently - which means they've done away with much of the floor space and now have all the departments crammed together upstairs like a posh jumble sale and the lower floors that used to have all sorts of nice sections like haberdashery now just house massive escalators) when Elle and I lost ma-in-law. It's quite hard to spot your own small bubble-permed pensioner in a sea of small bubble-permed pensioners. Especially when they're all wearing the same coat.

Giving up the search in the melee that was the evening-wear department (Dolce et Gabana sequinned vests at £2,500 anyone?), we thought she might have decided to go downstairs, so we took the plunge earthwards on the down escalator. Halfway down to the basement we passed ma-in-law sailing upwards alongside us. We all waved at one another and made extravagant hand gestures indicating that she should stay put and we'd her meet at the top. Suffice it to say that no sooner were we on the up escalator in hot pursuit when we passed ma-in-law sailing downwards. We all waved again. This went on for almost half an hour. What seemed quite funny at first soon became bloody tedious.

In the end, I stayed at the bottom and Elle stayed at the top. Ma-in-law didn't arrive at either of them. Feeling a bit worried that I'd have to go home and tell The Toyboy Trucker I'd mislaid his mother in a department store, we searched high and low (literally). Forty five panic-stricken minutes later we eventually found ma-in-law having a skinny latte and a Danish in the coffee shop with a man from Croydon who had lost his wife in bedding.

Nothing much else to say about the day really except The Toyboy Trucker declined to come with us because he has a cold. It'll be man flu by this time tomorrow - or I'll eat my hat....