Trends and Tendencies

Tadpole&Teddy. When the little mafioso Worm of a few illustrations back showed up at a political gathering in a bowler hat he started a trend. Lately every other small creature that creeps, crawls, wiggles, wriggles, swings, sways and sashays in the Far Borders is sporting one. Panamas and Porkpies, Tops and Trilbies, Bowlers, Boaters, Borsalinos, Fedoras, Pamelas, Cloches, Bonnets and Bergí¨res, you name it, there goes a tiny organism wearing a classic headpiece -in many cases far too big for its bijou frame, but there’s fashion for you: inevitable, insidious and often ridiculous but always good for a laugh. I mean, if you’ve never seen a ladybird in a Cordobés or a jumping spider in a Ten-Gallon … well then, you haven’t half lived, that’s what I think. Minuto, the Deeply Red Teddy, thinks this fashion caper is all an evil plot. A malevolent conspiracy concocted and instigated by the Market Forceps to give the differently-sized a bad name. And we all know how the story goes from this point on, do we not? Once you’ve acquired a bad reputation it soon becomes abominable and therefore it’s easier to start screeching about mortal threats to Our Wonderful Way of Life and therefore talking sanctions and suggesting no-flight zones and proposing jackass boots on the ground and even hinting at nukular missages. Minuto is nobody’s fool.