Alan wants to know where he can get a Panama hat cleaned and blocked.

"Now that they are back in fashion — albeit with a different age group than formerly — perhaps someone out there knows?"

This is not as easy as it might sound. Most of the specialist men's hat shops that offer cleaning services seem to be in the provinces. There used to be any number in Tokyo but, as Alan says, hats that require this kind of care and attention have been out of fashion until very recently.