Here comes the rain again: cheer up your day with a season-specific brolly
When was the last time you left the house without an umbrella in your handbag? It’s become second nature to me now.
Just as my father used to do the “watch, wallet, spectacles, testicles…” check (the last being to make sure the fly was done up) before leaving the front door, my mantra now is: “Money, keys, phone, lippie, brolly.”
Umbrellas are appalling objects really. They get in the way, they poke people in the eye, they make everything in your handbag wet when it stops raining, they lose themselves. But they are a hell of a lot better than getting soaked.
I’m sure, like me, you have been reminded of that recently, after getting properly wetted by one of the sudden tropical downpours we’ve been having this ‘summer’.
One full drowned rat experience, when the water drips from the end of your nose and your clothes cling like a wet T-shirt competition, was enough to get me over my brolly reluctance until the jetstream goes back to wherever it’s really supposed to be.
Then I realised I needed a new one. A new species in our lives: a summer umbrella. Who knew? We didn’t, but I increasingly find that when I meet up with gal pals, the soaking brolly they come in holding like a dead rat is a jolly thing, not the dreary black bog-standard workaday umbrella of winter showers.
Open & Close Photo Rose Red umbrella, £19, BrolliesGalore
Birdcage umbrella, Lulu Guinness, £31.98, Umbrella World
B&W Block Stripe Miniflat, £18, Totes
Galleria Art Print Palm Tree umbrella, £24.95, Brollies Galore
It does make sense to try to cheer up this most dreary of summer seasons with a gay parade of brightly coloured parapluies that will make our streets look more as they are supposed to at this time of year.
With this aim, your summer brolly should be a bright colour, a glorious print, or a classic stripe or polka dot. Anything as long as it’s camp. My ideal would be something Eliza Doolittle would have taken to Ascot, but in a folding version.
Umbrellas are awkward enough in real life without introducing the nightmare of having to carry a big stick around all day. It has to be a micro that folds down small enough to fit in your bag; just have a plastic bag in there to put it in après le deluge.
If you don’t share my stick umbrella aversion, and are camping/glamping/festivaling this year, Fulton’s full-length Tri-bella comes with three handles: one normal, one for clamping to a table or chair, and one spiked to stick in the ground.
As to where to buy your summer umbrella, real life shops are getting very low on supplies. Accessorize did have some lovely ones, but I can’t find the striped one I crave anywhere. John Lewis has a shockingly poor selection in the Oxford Street flagship; I felt really let down by the auntie of all department stores.
Pop Art Lips tiny folding umbrella, Lulu Guiness, £28, Brollies Galore
Morris & Co Superslim in Sweet Briar, £22, Brollies Galore
Floral Pink Gerbera (Auto-Folding),£24.50, Umbrella World
Mini Folding Umbrella in Royal Rose White, Cath Kidston, £20, Brollies Galore
So the best place to head, as it increasingly is these days, is online. There are several excellent sites specialising in brollies, with the most tempting array of mad giant dahlias and gerbera prints, butterflies, polka dots and leopardskin, with frilled edges, to be found.
There’s one that looks as though Mowgli has made it from palm leaves, a glorious reproduction of Monet’s water lilies, and classic prints by William Morris. They’re so jolly that they really would make this ghastly weather a bit more bearable.
The one I will most probably buy is the classic broad black and white stripe with an acid yellow border from Totes, or possibly the grandma’s bedroom rose print from Umbrella Heaven, as it has the crook handle I crave. Much more fun than the more workaday square end. Or maybe the red with white spot mini from Brollies Galore, which looks like a bandanna.
If I weren’t so allergic to the idea of an unfolding ‘walking’ umbrella it would be very hard to go past Lulu Guinness’s exquisite clear plastic birdcage. Or her cameo design. So gorgeous. (But forget it, really.)
I’m secretly hoping that by investing in such a season-specific summer umbrella – and writing about the concept – I might set up a Sod’s Law reaction which causes an immediate and long-term heatwave.
Where to buy:
Umbrella Heaven
Umbrella World
Brollies Galore
Totes
Umbrella Superstrore (Fulton Tri-bella)
See all articles by Maggie Alderson for high50