In some ways I’m a groovy modern day cool cat chap thing
But I like to keep some harkback to olden days, and I beleive that it is still right and that to doff ones hat when a dead person passes by in a car, or pulled by a horse.
Of course, if a dead corpse is being pulled along the ground by a horse, like the dog in National Lampoons Vacation, then I might stop to help, or point or something.
Now, in between Victorian times and the modern day there was a lengthly period in which people didn’t wear hats much, what with the wars and that (they wore helmets then), and I believe this is why the fashion of taking off ones hat in respect of the dead has gone awry. Except of course for in detective dramas like Morse and Frost where it has to contractually happen at least once per episode, but normally at the sight of a hideously mangled murder victim, so that’s ok then.
But, since the early nineties and the emergence of madchester chic the hat has come demonstratbly back into the public mood.
Alas, like other victorian values such as hanging and eating all of the pig the doffed hat remains a thing of the past.
Except for in my tiny world where I take every opportunity given to lift my headwear for a dead guy.
Only, these opportunities in Central London don’t come up too often, there may well be scores of people dropping like flies, but in Islington we don’t tend to see them, they get hurried away by modern days elves in the night now that the shoemaking industsry their fathers toiled so hard to build up has gone the same way as the coal mines (but without the union action – although good at upper soles and laces, elves are useless at placard construction).
So my hat ususally remains on my head until I choose to take it off.
But today… Hooray for death there was a hearse passing (quite quickly) me on my walking trek to work but…
I’d left my hat at home…