Guest blogger Mantilla Amontillado is the founder of Veritas Vestments. She holds a degree in Ecclesiastical Haberdashery from Salamanca University. She has done the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella three times on horseback and is engaged to the famous matador, Senor Augusto Torquemada.

I have to tell you this Hon. I am talking to Mother Agnes at the Carmelite convent where the sisters are busy making Mantilla’s line of birettas, and she tell me that we have competition over in England. That’s right hon. You have to take a look at this website which is all about the biretta. They are having pictures of many priests wearing birettas, and they have the different kinds of biretta and some of them in different colors! They are even making the Spanish biretta! Then I am hearing from the gossip that they are getting attention from some kind of big time journalist named Damson Thomas who is an ecclesiastical fashionista in London and likes to write articles about the Latin Mass and high class Catholics from Oxford and vestments and he is friends with the people at Watt and Co and Wipples and all these things.

So now because of Damson Thomas these British biretta guys are getting some attention from all over the world and the gossip tells me that they are having lots of orders for their birettas and they are even making them in camouflage colors maybe for army chaplains.

What are we going to do hon? Next thing you know they will be having a movie about birettas with Mel Gibson. It will be some kind of action movie about a Catholic priest who is also a secret agent. Maybe they even call it The Beretta in My Biretta. Mel Gibson will be riding around Rome on a Vespa in a cassock and biretta chasing the bad guys, and then these biretta makers in London will have credits and interviews with the big papers and maybe even get an Oscar for costumes and everything.

We got to do something about this hon. I have been working so hard for my company Veritas Vestments and we are building up this business here and now we have this competition. I don’t know what to do. You know? Ok. Hon. Listen. You tell me not to worry and maybe we should work in partnership with these guys, but I don’t like that idea. These are English you know? What do they know about the biretta? Nada. I am thinking Spanish Armada and what they did to poor Queen Catherine of Aragon. Mantilla is not happy.

OK. I take a deep breath. Maybe I come up with an idea. Listen hon. Maybe you can get the address for these men over in London. Augusto have this cousin who lives over there and is studying English right now. Maybe Augusto and his brothers can go over and pay a visit to these guys.  Maybe he offer to buy them out or something like that, and if they don’t want to he can make them some kind of offer they can’t refuse. You know what I mean? What do you think? OK. Hon. Stop laughing at Mantilla. I am serious. OK? Give me a drink. I got to think about this some more. You think Augusto is too much a coward to do anything about this? I think maybe you’re right. In the bull ring he’s a big man. Outside he’s just–how you say? Un gatito. He not even have the courage to set a date for our marriage.

So I guess it’s up to me hon. Tell you what. I have a great idea. You see if you can get the address. I’m going to talk to Mother Agnes. She’ll come with me. You know how she used to knock those boys around when she was in that teaching order. Nobody argues with Mother. Then I am going to check out tickets for London and me and Mother will go to see these English biretta makers. We’re going to talk. Know what I mean hon?