It’s not just the old bay window, you can tell that Mr Lock the Hatter has been there for ages by the door – sturdy and rounded by time, it’s as weathered and venerable a door as you you’ll ever see in London. Lock & Co have been selling hats from their St James Street shop since 1676 and must be one of the oldest shops in London. This is the hatter used by Admiral Lord Nelson, General De Gaulle and other great personages to cover their illustrious bonces.

As you might expect, hats like these don’t come cheap. Luckily for the hoi polloi, Lock & Co have a January sale to which I made my way earlier in the month. Surrounded by piles of classic headware, I spied this fez and couldn’t resist trying it on. In the end I managed to resist the embroidered smoking cap or Biggles-type flying helmet and left with a Trilby.

The hat is yours
On the topic of hats, here’s that classic Swedish flash movie Hatten Ar Din, an internet phenomenon from around the year 2000. Gosh, how I remember chuckling away at it. Apparently it is a song in an unidentified ‘middle eastern’ language and the Swedish translation at the bottom is all misheard. So, who knows what what they are really singing in the chorus, but it sounds like Hatten ar din in Swedish, which means The hat is yours in English