I have never owned a baseball cap, but I have read Jenny Joseph

Recently on Twitter there has been much talk of hats and whether they are life enhancing or a sheer embarrassment. I tend to the former school of thought, being of an extravagant nature and decided to post on hats I have known.

The first hat I remember was a dark green beret with a white silky tassel on top, I loved the tassel with a passion (the inner burlesque already making itself known) as it made playing horses much easier, providing a tail for frisking.

Then at boarding school we wore a boater, which we knew as a "board". Worn at a clearly prescribed angle there would be prefects outside church knocking it to the horizontal, in case any of us were either playing angels with it tipped back like a halo or with it tiptilted rakishly over one eye. At the end of our seven years servitude I laid mine down on the High Street and waited for a vehicle to crush it to oblivion. It was a long wait, this was rural Staffordshire.
When I got into the senior school I became a member of the school choir so also got to wear this, not actually a hat, but certainly a head covering. The smell of ironed linen can still make me want to burst into song.

Having left school I went to art college and afterwards on to uni, where I went through a range of eccentric home made numbers usually involving feathers, ribbons, veiling and massive embarrassment for the then boyfriend. Although none of these have survived the march of time they are remembered with great affection. They tended to look very similar to this. They were worn in public. I suspect I was laughed at but I was an art student, we have a tradition to maintain

From Uni to work, there had to be a radical rethink, I wanted to be a grown up, so not only did I get a camel coat but sensible hats, fedora, panama and a rather neat little number with a cockade of cocks feathers. What I hadn't taken in to account was that no one wore hats, so even sensible ones stood out. I was working on a huge engineering site in a predominantly male environment and I became known as "Hats" by the guys on the shop floor, who would make me alternative headgear with bubble wrap and card. Yes, I did wear them, it would have been bad manners not to and I had my reputation for "quirkiness" to live up to. (I was even wearing one when I met my husband, which should have warned him).

Through the 80's with both weddings and the New Romantics there were splendid opportunities to go for the mushroom look. I know stylists say that if you are short you should not wear big hats, but I decided I knew better. Looking back I realise I didn't.

Strangely, when I got married I lost my nerve and rather than go for a veiled Victorian top hat (probably with sequins) which was my original fantasy I had a tiny little circlet of flowers from John Lewis, go figure. (I have just removed the wedding photograph from its frame to scan on, so the strange ectoplasmic effect is actually where it has faded, rather than a visit from Miss Haversham. )

As time passed I acquired a veiled tricorn that I wore in Venice, with some aplomb, at the Carnevale and with less success in Harrogate, the strange take on a medieval Turkish helmet made in velvet that I bought in Salzburg - look it has a tassel..... the Venetian Gondolieri hat my father bought me, a huge fur thing that was meant to make me feel like Anna Karenina but actually just looked as if an absent minded cat had gone to sleep on my head, a stetson from Texas - yeehaw, an Aussie drovers hat, and now, the hat to end all hats.

The Russian Officers hat which I will wear as I plan world domination.

Once I have succeeded in my evil plans I think I will go for this.