Malvin Buys A Hat

Once upon a time...

There was a big, purple and green, polka dotted dragon named Malvin. He lived in a cave, half way up a mountain, about half a mile from a town of natives. These people didn’t like Malvin very much, and would occasionally climb the mountain with sharp objects, in the hopes that they could kill him. They never succeeded.

One day Malvin was flying around, window shopping, when he discovered a rather large hat. It looked like a giant beetle, with a feather coming out of its eye. He put it on and instantly decided he looked dashing. The sales assistant agreed with him because he wanted the commission, and he bought it there and then.

Roaming around town in his new hat, Malvin felt on top of the world, until he fell into the duck pond because he couldn’t see where he was supposed to be going, and the water just rose up to greet him.

Shaking himself like a dog to get dry, he sprayed dirty pond water all over an old woman that was hanging by her feet in a nearby garden. He apologised profusely then helped the old woman down. When he had left she re-hung herself, how was she to get dry otherwise?

He carried on walking down the road, turning the heads of all the dragons he passed, not noticing the sniggering that followed him. When he came to the park, he turned into it and sat on a bench feeling majestic.

He was just dozing off in the early evening heat, thinking of how much his new lime green hat would match his wardrobe of red t-shirts, when a beautiful apparition appeared to him. She was a very short, squat dragon, but she had the biggest brown eyes he had ever seen, also she was wearing a red t-shirt, his favourite.

He tried to get her attention by waving his arms, for you see, he was too shy to actually speak to her. When she did not turn his way, he thought she couldn’t see him and sat down again, feeling depressed.

He wandered home thinking about setting his house on fire and claiming on the insurance, when a very pretty dragon, made of pale pink and gold scales rounded the corner and smiled at him. He returned it and they walked a little way conversing about the little things in life, red t-shirts, toothpaste, milk jugs and red t-shirts.

She asked about his hat, and he told her he had seen it in a shop, called Hats Which Won’t Suit You on the corner of Bad Hair Street. He also told her the clerk at the store had reinforced his view that the hat made him look like a young Amelda Marcos. The pretty dragon, Paula, agreed that the hat looked good, and said they should attend a “best dressed” competition the next day to prove it.

They agreed that they would meet at the competition, and Malvin flew home feeling happy and blowing fire at villagers to make their hair stand on end, then hiding behind a bush when they looked around.

The next day he met up with Paula at the competition, which took place on the top of a cliff and all the bunting was a deep, blood colour so Malvin was very happy.

When his category was called Malvin made his way to the podium at the very edge of the cliff. He received no marks for the style of his hat, with the judges saying he looked like a lemon with half a lime on it head. This made him feel small and humiliated, he looked to the crowd for reinforcement from Paula, but he couldn’t see her.

Assuming she had gone to buy them a drink, he decided he would wait for the end of the competition, before having a depressed fit and flinging himself off the cliff, he forgets that he can fly.

The competition finished and he came in last, wondering through the crowd, he found Paula sitting on a bench. She told him not to worry about it, that she still liked him, but he felt bad and removed his hat. Underneath he had the worst hat hair ever recorded in the history of such things, and believe me it’s quite a long history.

Paula recoiled in shock, the hair was so bad people were throwing themselves of the cliff to avoid it. She couldn’t look at him anymore and simply said that she had to go away. And after that she quickly threw herself off the cliff with the rest.

Standing alone on the cliff top, amid the fallen banners and streamers pronouncing the Big Dragon Hat Competition, Malvin let out a loud wail and threw the hat off the cliff to follow the others. He hid his hair in his hands and meandered home, because he couldn’t see the path with his hands on his head.

At the village next to his cave, even the villagers were so disgusted with the state of his hair that they stayed indoors and wouldn’t talk to him about the weather. He sat in his cave and tried to chop his wings off with a blunt rock.