New month, more work! No time to get any 1 thing intended today. Didn't get a picture at work but changed from black belt and boots to brown belt and boots. Nautica blue dial watch with both. Celebrating my Grandmother's 94th birthday tonight.

The town where I live, Stockport UK , was once the global epicentre of the felt hat industry. It produced millions of hats annually throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Today, my wife and I took a guided tour of the Hat Works museum, a once-functional factory full of the old machinery, steeped in historical millinery. We learnt a lot. For example, the links to the slave trade and Frederick Douglass, and Abraham Lincoln’s letter to the workers here. The industry-fuelled mass extinction of beavers in the UK, which saw them being shipped over from Canada (before a more sustainable solution saw 150,000 dead rabbits every week instead). The punishing poisonous process of hat-making itself, that led to countless deaths. And the money made, that was manipulated in an underhand fashion to prevent the GDP of Stockport eclipsing that of London and likely rewriting geographical history. Then there was the Gallery of Hats, with over 400 historical examples of hat styles from around the world, from the functional to the fashionable to the fantastical and everything in between. After lunch at the charity-ran cafe and art installation, we exited through the gift shop… where we both bought a hat! My wife went for a purple Winter Cloche Wool hat, which frames her face wonderfully and shows off her excellent hair. After much deliberation, I went for a black Pork Pie Wool hat, partly because I like the semi-formal nature of it but mostly because it gives off Heisenberg vibes. Both hats are Dentons, a company that is still local to me and very well regarded. If you’re in the neighbourhood and at a loose end, I can highly recommend the museum and the guided tour. And the hats? They’re pretty decent too.