Chapter Nine
Talking of Hats
1
That was on the fifteenth afternoon of February, as I remember well.
Now those who are sensitive to any extreme condition of our climate will not have forgotten that towards the end of July of the year 1923 there was a week or ten days when the heat in London was so oppressive that frequent complaints were made at the confectioners and Soda Fountains on the ground that their ices were warm: nor were the nights less uncomfortable – ‘uncomfortable,’ that is, to quote from a gentleman who wrote to The Times about it, ‘in a country so unprepared for any extreme of temperature that, if I do not seem too fanciful, on a cold winter’s day there is nothing warm but the drinking-water and on a hot summer’s day nothing cool but the sun.’ Of course he did seem too fa
