Feathered whales…

CHRIS BENNETT toys with birds of a feather.

WHEN I glanced from my seat at the bar in the local one day last week, I thought for a moment that a flock of splendid tropical rain forest birds had settled in the dining room.

It hadn’t, of course: it was the Red Hat Society gracing, in many ways, the dining room of the High Rock Pub (and Grill).

A pair (a brace, perhaps?) of these elegant fowls came into the bar and I asked them the obvious question.

That got me trawling the net back at my cottage. I was rather delighted by what I found.

It appears that the Red Hat Society, of which there are now something like 50 thousand members in 26 countries, meet regularly (please note that I did not write on a regular basis; it would have killed the prose, such as it is) in a place of their choosing.

What I found particularly engaging is that members of the society, who wear a red hat and a purple outfit to their lunches, gather for the simple pleasure of enjoying each other’s company. In this world of ours something so simple is at once engaging and charming.

The society was founded in the United States in 1998 by one Sue Ellen Cooper. Membership is restricted to women over 50, although recently a Pink Hat Society has emerged for those of slightly more tender years.

The society has a slight but interesting connection to South Africa.

Inspiration was drawn by Cooper from Jenny Joseph’s poem, Warning, the opening lines of which read:

“When I am an old woman I shall wear purple

With a red hat that doesn't go and doesn't suit me”.

Jenny Joseph is an English poet. She was born in Birmingham, and studied English literature at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, before becoming a journalist. She worked for the Bedfordshire Times, the Oxford Mail and Drum Publications in Johannesburg.

Of course the members don’t sport just any old red hat. These confections are meant to delight, and to send a frisson through the chosen setting. The gorgeously decorated millinery displayed with such élan at the High Rock last week brought a joyous note of summer. Feathers fluttered and bobbed in the hats as their wearers chatted and chaffed their lunchtime away.

By the way, those readers with a bent for arithmetic will have realised that the collective membership of the world’s Red Hat Societies represents two and a half million years. Just thought I’d mention it.

While I am on the subject of the pub, the old beer garden, which was more like a back yard, has been transformed with the replacement of ugly concrete slotted fencing by a charming wooden fence and new beer garden furniture. To me it seemed a good effort on the part of the management and their stalwart, Ricardo.

The High Rock will be the venue for a presentation next Monday (29^th) by my friend Larry Routledge.

Larry was a member of the intrepid team that took on the Japanese whaling fleet in the Southern Ocean last summer, which was seen worldwide on satellite television. He is not only a good engineer, but he is an experienced sailor and an excellent photographer.

Before the crew left for the Antarctic Larry was involved in the preparation in New Zealand of the extraordinary catamaran, the Adi Gil. It was eventually rammed by a whaler from the Land of the Rising Sun, and it was lost with much of Larry’s equipment. He and the other crew members were shaken but not stirred.

The presentation, at 6pm at the High Rock in Palm Beach, will be illustrated but Larry’s fine photography; an event worth attending.