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Written by Garry

Created: 12 November 2009

As you may have read earlier, one particularly harrowing self-inflicted disaster to befall me on my travels through Europe was the loss of my trademark black fedora whilst changing trains on the Spanish/French border. It was gut wrenching at the time, although to be honest it was a miracle the thing made it as far as it did, as it was always riding in strange places on trains owing to my inability to rest my head back against a train seat while wearing it.

Anyway, once I was safely back in Australia I set about an epic interstate adventure in quest of a replacement. I started my search in the menswear and department stores around Adelaide city, but I didn’t have any luck. This was hardly surprising, as it is well established that Adelaide is more or less completely useless in terms of anything cool.

My sister had suggested that late spring was probably the wrong time to be buying felt hats, and that most people would only buy such a thing in the lead up to winter. I couldn’t help but feel that this was a ludicrous suggestion. Since when did black fedoras have an in season? The last time they were fashionable was nineteen forty-seven. There again, my sister would know more about such things than I would.

I took my search to a national level when I visited Sydney on my way north. I was so determined to find the right hat that I even resorted to taking a girl shopping with me. We went straight for a specialty hat shop in the Strand Arcade and although they did have a selection of black fedoras, none of them were quite right. If this seems a little picky and ridiculous, that’s only because… it is.

Almost all fedoras in shops today have a folded or lined edge on the brims. Apparently this is considered the vogue look in felt hats. My old hat had what I have since learned is called a cut edge, without the girly edging on the brim. Unfortunately this is now considered terribly unfashionable (I am still working on the draft of a paper theorising the existence of a quantum commercialism uncertainty principle, whereby the very act of me wanting something specific instantly renders it unavailable) so such cuts are very difficult to come by.

But come by it we did. Sort of. There on a low shelf in the so-called ‘menswear’ department of David Jones on Pitt St. was exactly what I needed: black felt, cut edge, size 58 fedora.

Two hundred dollars. Freak me sideways. Who pays $200 for a hat? The most relevant answer is: not me. I was crestfallen, but I still had one trick up my sleeve.

I spent a week in Brisbane and headed on in to the shop where I bought the original way back in ’06. The shop was still open and still full of hats. I asked the same guy about whether he had any of the kind of hat I wanted in stock.

Hat guy: Ah yes, I remember the hat you’re talking about. It came out of Melbourne right? An emu feather in the band?
Garry: That’s the one.
Hat Guy: Yep. They don’t make those anymore.
Garry: (aside) Noooooooooooooooo!

I looked around his shop for a while, and did find a similar hat that was the perfect style. Unfortunately they only had it in brown, so I asked about ordering one in black. He looked it up on their database and it turns out the manufacturers (Akubra) only make it in brown or steel grey.

At this point the young sales assistant, who evidently had some experience in other hat retailers around the country (…I know) remarked that he knew of a hat that would match the specifications I had asked for exactly. Unfortunately Akubra made it exclusively for the Strand Arcade hat shop in Sydney.

I may have thrown a small tantrum at this point.

So I’m still fedoraless as I sit and write this in Darwin. Unfortunately here it’s difficult to find styled hats that aren’t decorated with crocodile teeth. I’m working on potentially placing an order with Akubra, once I can figure out what styles they do. But before that comes a car and a new computer and new phone and God knows what else. I’ll keep you posted. Because I’m sure you’re all riveted.

Far from home

Garry with 2 Rs

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Written by Garry

Created: 14 September 2009

I've landed a new job in Darwin! Cue the fireworks display.

I'll be working as a training officer for a credit union up there. No-one (including the credit union staff) is exactly sure what a training officer's daily duties will look like, but then "difficult to define" has always looked good on me.

I'll be moving into a unit with an old friend in Palmerston (eek!) from the beginning of November. Hallelujah!

Far from home

Garry with 2 Rs

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Written by Garry

Created: 26 October 2009

Another strategy I employed while reducing my luggage weight in in Europe was to chuck out everything but the most essential clothes. This turned out to be a largely fruitless exercise as the newly created space was quickly reoccupied by souvenir junk from all over the place. But when I got back to Australia, it did give me the overwhelmingly exciting chance to head into town to restock my wardrobe. And then blog about it.

Now I've never been well regarded for my taste in clothes. I realise that in terms of casting a disapproving eye over what others consider to be the it look for the season (whatever that is supposed to mean) I don't really have a leg to stand on.

But it has come to this: I was in David Jones for a few simple necessities; beige trousers, plain coloured t-shirts and a black felt fedora. I stepped off the escalator into the menswear department and immediately had to check the directory to make sure I was on the right floor, and that I hadn't just walked into the ladies' shirts aisle.

At this point regular FFH readers might be calling to mind a few important Far From Home traditions.

1) I have been known, on occasion, to stretch the truth ever so slightly in order to emphasise a point. For example, I haven't actually ever set fire to Koorong, or any other Christian bookshop for that matter.

2) At times, these artificially elongated truths can get a bit out of hand and take on a life all of their own. For example, it's not clear (though, in my defense, certainly not out of the question) whether the original Oxfam Girl has ever been to Spain, let alone walked the Camino de Santiago.

3) Sometimes I just plain make stuff up.

But no no no no no no no. This time I'm dead serious. At first glance I actually couldn't tell the difference between the menswear and ladieswear departments. Men's fashion really has become that camp.

Furthermore, it's not just me. I was walking through David Jones with a girl the other day and...

... Yes I was walking through David Jones with a girl. I'd rather not talk about why. Just take it on face value that, for very specific and justifiable reasons, I contravened my usual protocols and went shopping with a girl. Now shut up and let me finish.

I was walking through David Jones with a girl the other day and felt compelled to get a second opinion. It turns out she also thinks tight white vests with silver sequins would look a bit sexually ambiguous on a man, to say the least. Apparently androgynous is the new black.

Call me old fashioned, but I liked the old black better.

Far from home

Garry with 2 Rs

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Written by Garry

Created: 22 September 2009

One of the strangest and most uncomfortable choices I made in Spain while I was looking for ways to make my luggage lighter was the decision to leave my bible behind in Malaga.

Now the bible I had been using and travelling with was a huge hard cover NIV with half of each page taken up with the scriptures themselves and the other half with study notes and maps and cross-references and character profiles and all sorts of other meta-biblical stuff. It was all very interesting, but not very practical for packing in a rucksack. So I left it behind.

Nor was the dangerous symbolism associated with abandoning the scriptures to go travelling on my own through Europe lost on me. I felt superstitiously uneasy as we pulled out of the train station, so I decided not to think too hard about it and focussed instead on finding ferry tickets to Tangiers.

But the subversive niggle of realising I was a Christian who didn’t even own a bible never really left me alone and took up residence in the back of my head alongside equally insidious influences such as the feeling that I should update my blog more regularly and the suspicion that I should probably take better care of my teeth.

Once I got back to Australia, however, I knew it was time to set things right. I gritted my teeth (I’ve got to stop doing that) and headed for that ever-present help in time of nothing else to write about: Koorong Christian Bookshop.

Now I have ranted, a little harshly perhaps, on the questionable usefulness of some materials in Koorong in the past, but when it comes to places where you can buy bibles, Koorong certainly is one. They’ve got a whole section with shelves and shelves of them, which might seem excessive these days, but then if you’re going to run a Christian bookshop, the one thing you’re going to want to stock lots of is the Christian book.

They had bibles in every possible size and colour. Every translation I’d ever heard of and a few I hadn’t. Red letter bibles, large print bibles, amplified bibles. Everything from just the text and nothing else through to cross-referenced, annotated, indexed, concorded and inclusive of a CD with extra… I don’t even know what.

So which one did I choose?

As enticing as the gigantic annotated versions were, I decided my days of carrying a besser-brickesque book around with me were behind me. The study notes in the old one never really answered the questions I was interested in anyway. This is probably because the questions I’m interested in can’t really be answered in a four page essay, let alone a footnote at the bottom of a chapter. Also, I’m getting to the stage where if I want to take bible studies to the next level, then footnotes aren’t going to cut it anymore.

I went with a slim line black soft cover NIV with notes on translation choices but nothing else. I’ve borrowed one of my mother’s bible commentaries, so the new plan is to start again from the beginning with a book-by-book analysis by a guy who reputedly knows what he’s on about. So here we go again; chapter one.

In the beginning, God…

Far from home

Garry with 2 Rs