Red Hat Society

For some of you out there this might be "old Hat" but for me it was my first encounter with the Red Hat Society and it was the highlight of my day. I don't know whether this also brings an acute awareness of age which I have made a great job of ignoring so far, but this cant be a bad choice of how to spend some of it.

I went to a market, more about that in my next blog, but there at the table next to ours at lunch sat a lively bunch of women who looked splendid in Red Hats and purple outfits. So splendid in fact that I went over and asked for permission to photograph them and here they are. I asked if they were celebrating an event and they told me all about the Red Hat Society which was started in 1998 by a woman called Sue Ellen who gave a 55 year old friend a Red Hat and the poem written by Jenny Joseph called "Warning". Some say women become invisible after 50, so by dressing in purple with Red Hats they could put a little punch and panache back into their lives and become highly visible again. It seems this has become popular the world over and here I am miles away from anywhere having just come across it. 

Here is the poem: 

Warning

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.


And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.


I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings


And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain


And pick the flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go


Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple

And here are the ladies !

So they get out and celebrate  life and having fun and the funniest bit was that the one woman at the table who was under fifty could wear pink and lavender !