A letter from a reader

At 68, I had not worn a hood since 1994

I can date it, because it was the week my youngest left school. Hoods, I decided, were for teenagers and anoraks, and I was finished with one and had never been the other, so that was that. I am 68, I am not a writer, and I have spent the thirty years since standing at bus stops in Yorkshire rain with an umbrella in one hand, the shopping in the other, and a wet neck regardless, because an umbrella at a bus stop is an argument you lose.

Then three different women asked me about a cardigan at the bus stop in the rain on Saturday, and I have said the same thing three times, so I am writing it down once.

Here is how a woman talks herself out of a hood. The things with hoods are one of two things. A hoodie, which on a woman of 68 reads as a grandson’s jumper borrowed by mistake. Or a waterproof, which keeps you dry and makes you look like the weather forecast. Neither goes with a skirt, neither goes to church, and neither looks like something you chose. So I chose the umbrella, and the wet neck, for thirty years, and called it dignity.

A hood and look fifteen or look like the forecast, or an umbrella and a hand I needed. For thirty years I needed the hand.

Nobody decides to get rained on for three decades. It happens one wet bus stop at a time, because the only hoods in the shops belong to teenagers and cagoules.

Then Jean put her hood up at the allotment gate

Jean next door and I were locking the allotment gate in June when one of those showers came over the hill, the kind you can see arriving, and Jean, without any fuss, reached behind her neck and put up a hood. On a cardigan. A soft lilac-blue thing with a patchwork of coloured stitches all over it and wooden buttons, which I had taken all morning for a cardigan and nothing more, and there she stood, dry, with both hands on the padlock, while I wrestled the umbrella.

It is called the Rosalie, from Manchester Boutique, a small British boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. Jean said, it is a cardigan with a hood, Pat, it is not a moral question. I ordered it that evening, fully expecting to send it back.

It did not go back. The umbrella has been retired to the car.

What happened at the bus stop

I wore it on Saturday over a white t-shirt and jeans, and the rain came while we waited, and I put the hood up, and kept both hands on the bags, and the bus came, and I put the hood down, and that was the whole drama.

Three different women asked me where it was from before the bus had pulled in. And Sylvia, who has known me thirty years and does not hand out compliments, said it suited me better than the umbrella ever did. From Sylvia, that is practically a medal.

Here is why it works, as far as I can tell. It is a cardigan first. Soft, light, buttoned to the hip with five wooden buttons, the kind of thing you would wear to lunch, with a patchwork of little coloured stitches all over it that looks like somebody’s grandmother made it. Then there is a hood, sitting quietly on the shoulders until it is needed, lined in a plain grey, and up it goes. The patchwork is printed on rather than stitched, which I thought was a cheat until I realised it means nothing catches on a gate or a basket and the whole thing stays smooth. And because it is soft and light, it goes over a t-shirt in August and under a coat in November.

It has been on every day since. To the shops, to the allotment, to church with the hood down, and twice with it up, in public, at 68, and the world has carried on.

Three things worth knowing

One. A hood is not a moral question. Jean was right. Put it on a cardigan instead of a hoodie and it stops being a teenager’s and starts being yours. I wish somebody had told me in 1994.

Two. Printed is the point. The patchwork looks hand-stitched and is printed on, so it is smooth to the touch, snags on nothing, and stays looking like the day it arrived. Jean’s has done a whole season at the allotment.

Three. Six prints, honest sizes. The lilac patchwork I own, and five others, bees and roses and confetti and the like, from a UK 8 to a 22, the same easy shape in all of them. I have my eye on the roses. Sylvia has been told.

About the price

I am careful with money and I will not pretend otherwise, so I will tell you the price was the bit that made me suspicious.

The Rosalie is £37.95. It was £76.00.

My first thought was that there had to be a catch, because a cardigan that looks like patchwork and has a hood on it is the sort of thing a craft-fair stall wants eighty pounds for and sells in one size.

There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is no department store taking a cut in the middle, and they sell the autumn stock through the summer sale, which is when a sensible woman buys her winter.

I do not trust perfect scores, so I read the reviews before I told my sister about it. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars, which sounded like real people, so I read on. One woman had written, “Soft as a sweatshirt, looks like a patchwork quilt, and the hood has saved my hair at the bus stop twice this week.” That was the one that decided it for me.

If you were stood at my kitchen table

If you were stood at my kitchen table with the kettle on and the rain at the window and you asked me, this is what I would say.

If you have been fighting an umbrella at bus stops since the children left school, you have not been stubborn. You have been offered a choice between a teenager’s hood and a cagoule, and quite rightly turned both down. This is the third thing, a hood on a cardigan you would have bought anyway, and it costs less than the umbrellas I have lost.

Two practical things. The sale is on now, and the middle sizes go first. And once the stock has gone, it is gone.

I wear a hood now. I am 68. Nobody has said a word.

Pat