Spoon Jar Jar Spoon

One summer I’ve been out walking on the hills at Todmorden and returned to the town centre where the car was parked. Through the summer the church which is splat in the centre of town holds some weddings. I’ve often seen a red old route master bus ferrying the guests around and the driver sometimes wear a fez. Thought I’d buy one - only £2.19 from ebay including delivery.

I was shopping down in Ashton once and bumped into a Pakistani man I knew (a neighbour of some flats I rented out.) He was fat when he disappeared to Pakistan for three months but he was thin when he returned with his new bride. One day I saw him put something in the bin at the front of the flats and he was wearing a fez. This was the second time in my life I have seen a person under a fez. Also I have only ever seen two kingfisher birds in my life. I have not seen a life mole yet; they have all been dead.

The neighbour said nobody else at his mosque wore a fez, that praying while wearing a fez was easier because Muslims put their foreheads on the ground many times while praying. The Turkish army used to wear a fez but this was stopped when it made them easy targets for the enemy; also it didn’t block out the sun. A fez is worn as a symbol of the womb. The top of it has a nipple shape that symbolizes the navel. The strands of the tassel are 360º as in 360º degrees of knowledge. The tassel indicates one who is born of the womb, endowed with and aspiring to and beyond 360 degrees of knowledge. They’re normally made of felt but the £2.19 ones from ebay aren’t (felt one £4.18 at the time of writing.)

In Britain if you think fez you think Tommy Cooper. I can remember my mum telling me she’d been watching him on television when he collapsed and died. Not many people die on live television. I taped a programme off the radio about Tommy Cooper called “Spoon Jar Jar Spoon – The Tommy Cooper Story.” The footage from the “spoon, jar, jar, spoon” routine is here....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cc3u9bVV6s4

So here is a painting featuring a fez. I laid out a few things on the kitchen top, took and photo and painted it. All went well excepting the dominos which seemed so fiddly to paint; I didn’t even bother and, in cowardly fashion, painted a table cloth (or whatever it is) on the kitchen top.

I have not worn my fez outdoors yet. I think they’d be good at catching vomit if you could not run to toilet fast enough.