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Ella was a funny old bird, one of those odd yet almost nondescript little old ladies set in their ways, who kept to themselves.  She always wore hats, winter and summer, when she went outside.  What made Ella that little bit less than nondescript were her hats.  Local kids nicknamed her The Mad Hatter, and if you think she was totally unaware of that you’d be wrong.  Sure, none of them called her that to her face since there was something formidable about her, small and frail as she appeared, yet she did know about it.  One of the bored and over-chatty till attendants at the local supermarket told her they called her The Mad Hatter, likely looking for a reaction.  Ella just stared up from her grocery packing, peered at the girl from under the broad brim of her felt hat and mumbled “Maybe I am,” and returned to her packing unphased and uninterested.  The shop assistant left the matter at that completely confused by the lack of an offended reaction. 

Ella had few dresses, blouses and skirts in her wardrobe as it was almost full of hats.  There were hat boxes piled on top of the wardrobe and in a neatly arranged heap in the corner of her bedroom.  Hats were her one passion in life apart from her garden and a fourteen year old cat called Hobo since she took it in when it was left wandering when its owner died.  The family cleared out the old man’s house but left the cat to fend for itself.  She never did say more than a muttered “Hello” to him in all of the over 40 years he’d lived in the street, so she had no idea what the cat’s original name was.  She was never a cat person, but she hated how it had just been abandoned and she couldn’t be bad to it.  So, she fed it and there it stayed! 

She fed wild birds in her garden too, so despite her somewhat antisocial personality and brash exterior, there must have been some kindness in her though I doubt few noticed it.