Fashion and sentimentality

I am haunted by the clothes that I have mislaid around the world: a Jaipuri silk embroidered scarf bought in India when I was nineteen, and dropped at a London bus stop; the Florentine silk lined glove that blew away over the Charles Bridge in Prague; the cerise patent dancing shoes I left in the back of a cab in Miami...And now my favourite winter accessory.

After covering my friend A's charming and really rather attractive neighbour in bright pink lipstick two weeks ago, I managed to leave my absolutely most favourite, most irreplacable, searched for for ages, brown wool hat at his place. I'd been making bad jokes about leaving odd earrings lying around for other girls to find, then went and promptly left my lovely hat behind.

My chances of retrieving it seem slight as he appears to be ignoring me. Somewhat irritating, not least because he's the one who tracked down my number the next day, texted to say it was great to meet, and that he hoped to see more of me.

'Of course', I replied. (Not mentioning the hat). But then silence for a week. My ears were cold. So I suggested an after dinner drink - and a hat reunion. He SMSd at 2am to say he'd been in Mexico, and wld hat hunt. And that was that.

Eventually I texted a gentle hat chasing message yesterday, a week later. Quelle surprise: silence from his end.

I remain a little confused. Is "May I have my hat back please?" code in Ameri-English for "I'm a psycho bitch stalker. Ignore me."?

I REALLY WOULD LIKE MY HAT BACK.

Gah. How far does a girl go in order to retrieve her possessions? My pride is feeling a little damaged: by ignoring me, he's making ME feel stalker-y, dammit, merely for chasing my beloved, if somewhat unprepossessing to the un-fashion eye, hat.

Dearest H has gone all John Le Carré on me, suggesting I should capitalise on the stalker vibe for amusement purposes, by hamming it up with odd, foreign language requests for le chapeau via SMS, cyptic blurred photographs and oblique references to bribes, followed by the suggestion of a Cold War-style dead letter box drop. (I think maybe his & my English sense of humour is too, well, English.)

I suspect that, being a boy, he has no idea of the attachment girls can have to their clothing. Sure I could go out to buy a replacement, but it wouldn't be the same hat, the one I searched for for ages, that fits me perfectly and doesn't make me look like an elf on acid.