Seeking great idea and a new thinking cap

Denis Lehane in better times, when his thinking cap blessed him with great clarity of thought and inspired ideas that came from on high.

I purchased a cap at the Ploughing Championships many years ago that was most unique.

It was a thinking cap, and if I recall correctly, it cost me a lot of money.

"With this cap," I was assured "You will never forget a thing again."

"But I thought it was a thinking cap?" says I.

"Well yes," said the seller, "but sure isn't thinking and remembering the same thing really?"

Anyhow, as I said, I purchased the cap at the ploughing and even though it looked like any other cap, it was not. It had magical powers.

I had faith in the seller for I was at the ploughing, and as you well know, the ploughing is a place only inhabited by the virtuous.

Honesty is all you get in the trade stands. Saint Patrick would have a job keeping up with them.

Anyhow I put on the cap and immediately it got me thinking.

It was extraordinary.

I had heard about thinking caps before, but to actually own one myself, to have one on your head was a different matter entirely.

I felt very proud, or at least I think I did.

Anyhow weeks went by, and I had at this stage thought about every notion under the sun.

Indeed, I had heard it said on a few occasions that "Auld Lehane is the greatest thinker in the country." So I knew it was working.

But alas, misfortune was to strike me and my cap, when one day we were back at Castleisland mart.

In a moment of madness and a little stress too, didn't I remove my cap from my head and place it on the bench beside me. And then of course when it was time to leave, didn't I forget to take my thinking cap with me.

I never thought of it.

I left Castleisland without my companion. My world would never be the same again.

And worse again, for weeks after, I couldn't think where I had left it.

And sure how could I think? I had no thinking cap on.

Anyhow, when I did eventually remember and returned to the mart, what do you think I found?

Exactly. I found nothing.

There it was, gone!

My cap. My essential piece of head gear had vanished. Gone up in a puff of smoke most likely. It was a tragedy. It was one of the worst calamities to ever happen to me in all my years as a farmer.

If I had still had it today, I imagine I would be one of the wealthiest men in the nation, if not the world. I'd be like Rockefeller.

"It's what is going on between your two ears that matters most, you stupid amadán," a teacher once informed me.

Anyhow this year, in an effort to right the wrong, I will be heading back up to the ploughing with one and only one purpose. Yes, you guessed it, to purchase a new thinking cap.

And I will get one too, or at least I think I will.