Umbrellas, I don’t like them. Don’t get on with them, never have. When my aunt in Zagreb was absorbed in some crime drama on the television, she would say it was “as tense as an umbrella”. The English translation doesn’t work, but if I may turn it around, I would like to explain why umbrellas make me tense.
There are so many reasons. If I need an umbrella, I rarely have one. If I do have one, I then leave it somewhere. If it’s windy, that humiliating inside-out thing might happen. All in all, it is very much not worth the bother. My hairdo isn’t changed by rain anyway. Yet so many people don’t seem to leave home without an umbrella, and they are only one raindrop away from calling on it. I marvel at this level of organisation, even envy it, but there should be a law against putting up a brolly if significant rain isn’t coming down.
