Scribbling in the Rain: Reflections on Umbrellas

EuropaWorld reports so often from dry and dusty parts of the world where water is short that we sometimes forget how lucky we are here in the UK to have plenty of it - most of the time at least. When school girls in Afghanistan are blown up as a result of terrorism or deliberate attempts to stop the education of women again we forget how lucky we are here to have the opportunities we do. So here is a little piece I wrote when it rained the other day and I happened to be looking out of the window.

It is pouring with rain and so dark that I've had to switch the light on. Not that there's much of that; the bulb is one of those energy efficient whats-its that take half an hour to come out of hibernation, so I'm writing this in semi-darkness. What ever happened to flaming June?

A girl has just walked past outside, oblivious to the rain. Even the girls these days are macho; coats being something created uniquely for old folk and wimps. They have no embarassment at turning up somewhere drenched to the skin, their garments transparent with wetness. Another example of our retreat from civilisation, I suppose.

Now the rain is driving, if not horizontally, then at 45 degrees. The girl, on her way to school presumably, stops and extracts a baby umbrella from somewhere about her person; she erects it above her head. It is so small that it looks like one of those creations that clowns carry when balancing on the high wire. Safe under its shelter she saunters out of sight.

What a curious thing is an umbrella, I reflect! A little roof that you unfold and carry above you on a stick to shade off the rain or the sun. When were umbrellas invented? I'd hazard a guess at the eighteenth century. And they still look quaint and old-fashioned even when machined from plastic and aluminium and upholstered in today's bright colours.

What other eighteenth century Heath Robinsonian inventions are left to us in daily use, I wonder? Cutlery, I suppose, and dinner plates; mirrors perhaps - but nothing surely as mechanical as an umbrella unless it be the cuckoo clock or the fan. But who uses a fan today? Whereas we would not hesitate to pull an umbrella from our handbags, to pull out a fan today at some social gathering is to invite knowing glances and sotto voce charges of eccentricity.

Unless we were showing off, of course, and pulled out one of those whirly electric contraptions whose blades spin round like a grasscutter. But how does one make eyes at someone from behind a battery operated mini-helicopter? Yet another example of technology killing
civilisation.

I see now that it has brightened up considerably. The electric light is fully charged and the sun has come out (ish). There's no longer an umbrella in sight. I shall leave my bah-humbug mood behind and get on with the work.

Posted by Fennie Somerville