fcuk rain

The current favourite in my not-small umbrella collection is a bold red one I bought a year ago last April, with the with words "FCUK Rain" emblazoned around the circumference. Yes, it's blatant branding (FCUK is French Connection United Kingdom, one of my favourite stores despite the fact that I have to pay them to to do their advertising), but it spoke to my attitude toward the rain this particular morning. The plan was a long-anticipated bike ride to my favourite Sunday morning breakfast spot and I was rained out. I used the umbrella to get me to and from the car to drive there, instead. Still good, but not the same.

Most of the brollies in my current collection have been favourites at one time or another, for various and diverse reasons. The coolest was one I can't use any more because the first time I went out with it, it disintegrated in my very hands. I think it's because it was old - I mean really old, from an antique shop somewhere, possibly London (a gift from a best mate who lives there). After about three minutes in Vancouver's polluted rain I heard a "shup-shup" sound and two seams were torn from bottom to top. Thus, the FCUK purchase. A pity, really, as it was a cool, classic Asian shape - flat across the circumference, coming to a dangerous point at the top, and with a v. cool giant metal ring for a handle. I still have it. May even repair it some day.

My green umbrella is a left over relic from a relationship in Korea. It's really nothing out of the ordinary as far as style is concerned, but sheltered a number of very good memories. For the longest time after I came home I wouldn't let anyone else use it - a weird little superstition I nurtured, but now all sentimental value has gone from it and it's just another way to keep the rain off.

Also from Korea is my "dungle-dungle" umbrella (the expression in Korean my friend used to describe what I was looking for to store clerks). It's black with a white edge around the bottom and it's gloriously round ("dungle" means something along the lines of "round and fat"). It always gets comments when I use it.

My all-time favourite, though, was my Ralph Lauren brolly, with leather handle and quality, cotton fabric sporting a rich-looking green polo plaid and golden metal tip, which was getting really scratched up before it was maliciously stolen and pawned by someone I know when I wasn't looking. I used it a lot in England, and when it wasn't raining (which it inevitably didn't do whenever I brought it along on excursions to London) I used it as a designer walking stick.

People don't use umbrellas much in Kelowna, which really gets me worked up when I see them walking like hang-dogs through the pouring rain, sometimes with a soggy paper over the head (how does that help the white t-shirt you're wearing, miss?). I'm not sure what they have against umbrellas. Maybe its because we refuse to believe it really rains here in the California of Canada?? Whatever.

Not that I've never been caught short (it really is sunny, usually - sometimes even while the rain is coming down). But even when that happens I refuse to adopt hang-dog position. When you walk through the storm, hold your head up high, the song says, so that's my approach. Sometimes, doing so is even more fun than using an umbrella - but only on occasion, otherwise you just become one of the pathetic, ill-prepared and that would never do.

Columnist Russell Smith just had a great rant on brollies in yesterday's Globe and Mail. For a good (and relatively short) read click this link: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040821/RUSSELL21/Columnists/Columnist?author=Russell+Smith