‘You’ll not mind us telling you the truth that that’s a terrible hat for you,’ one of them says to me, and the horrible thing is, she’s trying to be helpful.

‘That’s a woman’s hat,’ her friend says disapprovingly, jutting her chin at my turban.

They separate and walked past either side of me. I’m breathless with the nerve of them. ‘I do mind,’ I call after them.

‘Please yourself,’ one of them calls back.

I whip the turban off my head, trying to smooth my hair down while holding the umbrella between my knees, and I briefly catch the eye of a slim, well-dressed woman who’s holding the hand of a little girl in school uniform. The woman discreetly inserts a slender, manicured hand inside her bag and as she passes, she drops a coin into the turban.

I look in my hat. It’s a pound coin.

It’s the most demeaning moment of my life and I hurry home. What I haven’t taken into account is that Kentish Town is very different from Camden. Kentish Town is determinedly conventional.

I’m upset to find that contrary to what my friends have told me, political correctness is not as widespread as I’ve been led to believe. Not in Kentish Town, at least.

Back home, the fridge judders, my shoes thud, my stairs groan as I flee to my room, and for consolation I retrieve the blue feather cocktail dress and hang it up on my wardrobe door.

It’s suffered from being hidden in the golf bag. Some of the blue feathers have broken and it’s creased, but it brings me a familiar, soothing pleasure along with the ache of shame.

Enid found one of the feathers in our bedroom one evening on one of her good days when she came home from art class. She showed it to me, twirling it between her finger and thumb, and asked me where it had come from.

I’m not a slow-witted man, but I stared at the feather as if I’d been struck dumb, one unnaturally beautiful sky-blue feather; hard to imagine it had once been attached to a bird.

I looked at Enid, expecting her to confront me, but she was waiting for my opinion as to the source.

I could think of no explanation for it apart from the truth, and I couldn’t share that with her. But I wish I had. She was my moral compass. Enid and I were as close as a long-married couple can be, and I think of Mercia and Betty, how accepting they are of change, how modern the world is now. I wonder if Enid was like that too, if she had a side to her that I’d never seen, or if she’d expect me to stay strong and keep to the old values.