The Jeering Fred


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The Jeering Fred

 

One of the few hats of Thomas Warding's that actually has a useful purpose. It is also one of the only hats he made which does not have a spectacular name.

 

This hat has the very peculiar ability of transforming itself into a hat that somehow benefits the wearer at that time. For example, if the wearer is travelling through the desert, it will transform into a very wide brimmed floppy hat to shield the wearer from the harsh sun. Or if the wearer is suddenly found falling from a height of 1000 feet above a rocky outcrop, it may become a parachute-hat strapped to the bearers head, or a large solid lead block, the peculiar magic governing the hat determining whether you want to get to the ground slower or faster.

 

Nobody has ever seen what the hat looks like without a bearer, since the same magic that transforms it does not make a difference between a sentient being and, for instance, a bit of wood. Thus, the Jeering Fred, hung on a hatstand, would turn into some form that would benefit the hatstand, such as a string of sausages. (Why a hatstand would be benefited by a string of sausages is unknown). This bizzare nature of the Jeering Fred has caused it to be lost many times over the ages, and is most often found again by a very clumsy, blind, or drunk individual who thinks it would be a good idea to wear a string of sausages on his head, and what do you know, there's a perfectly good string hanging on this here hatstand.

 

This perhaps explains how this hat came to be in the possession of Throbald the Somewhat Addled, after his actions in the Fumbling Offensive. A bowl of cheese squiggles got knocked upside down on his head as he tripped over a barstool trying to look at a peculiar nut. Some believe that one of the squiggles was in fact the Jeering Fred, which had transformed into a squiggle after landing on top of one previously. (It is of course widely known that the most useful thing to a cheese squiggle is another cheese squiggle). This explains why when Throbald stood up again, he had a very smartly crafted black bowler hat on his head. Again, the queer nature of the hat somehow must have concluded that the most useful hat Throbald could be wearing at that time is a black bowler. Some darker, rarer texts suggest that he had somehow activated the true form of the hat, a theory that would be supported by his somewhat strange nature.