Umbrella Rage

By Friday Puppy

Southern Britain is officially in a state of drought. We have had two of the driest winters since records begun and it is now an offence to use a hosepipe or to wash your car with anything less than the dirty bath water your gran has just used.

Oh, and also April was the wettest April in 20 years.  Don’t you love it when you watch the news and they justify the state of the economy or weather by using data from 45 years ago as a benchmark for how the daily precipitation rates have changed.

It has now rained non stop for about 2 weeks and approximately half the country is in a state of flash floods and cars are racing ducks through the flooded streets – oh, and we are still in an official drought!!    Only the British!   Not only do we love talking about it, but we love fighting with ourselves as to whether it is flooded or drought.

Let me tell you one thing I hate though  -  Umbrellas.  I absolutely despise them.   This is not just some irrational homo rant, I really do hate them.

Here is my rationale why, I am almost positive most FP readers will nod along with some of these:

1. Unless you are tall enough to eat leaves of the tops of trees then you will inevitably be stabbed in the face at some point on a rainy day by someone walking along oblivious to what is going on.
2. Once people have opened them then they quickly become an object of lethal warfare as people use them as a form of weaponry to clear the path in front of them. As I not the tallest man in the world then I usually get ushered into the middle of the street by an umbrella wielding mum of 3 who looks like Mary Poppins on crack as she sweeps through the streets at full speed with her umbrella and soaking brood.
3. Umbrellas don’t actually work. You only have to walk through any city after a rain storm and it looks like a graveyard following an umbrella apocalypse. People walk around with their umbrellas as proud as punch until a gust of wind catches it, turns it inside out and then all of a sudden it makes them look like they are having a dual with some sort of fabric monster and ferociously fight with it and wrestle the bastard thing until they have had enough and then seem to just throw it to where ever it lands.
4. Not only do they not work, but when you are the person without one and you get invited to come and under someone elses, don’t do it. You will not be protected from the elements, instead the umbrella owner is only showing off their power by making you stand slightly on the periphery of it so every single drop that cascades down off the umbrella seems to magnetically find its way to the back of your neck and trickle slowly down your skin.

I understand the desire of an umbrella, and that people simply don’t to get wet, however for every one person who is saved from the rainfall by an umbrella, there are at least 5 other people in the near proximity who are being raped by the bloody thing!

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