Umbrella

I go to fetch Child One from school. This involves a five mile trog through the lanes to one of the local market towns, where I wait with all the other parents at the parking area in a park, waiting for the red-clad tide to sweep out of the distant gate and across the grass. It's a twice-daily chore that we share with another family from the village.

The weather is fine when I leave. Inevitably, by the time I get to the park, it's raining. Not disasterously hard, but persistantly and irritatingly. I lurk in the steaming-up car for as long as I can, until I catch sight in the mirror of the first red-jumpered child meeting a parent. I know I am safe until at least now, because neither Child One nor his mate are the keenest, most efficient children and will never be the first out.

Hunching my shoulders against the rain, I get out to go over to the field to meet the boys. (I find that hunching my shoulders against the rain is entirely ineffective, but I do it anyway. According to my observations, so does everyone else, and it doesn't work for them either. Something we could evolve out of doing, I think). And then, and then, I catch sight of it. Sitting in the boot of the car. A many-coloured, many-spendoured thing.

My umbrella.

A triumph of hue in red, blue, green and yellow fabric. An elegantly engineered steel-ribbed contraption which will, today, be the saving of both my hairstyle* and dignity.

I erect it proudly over my head. (Never thought I'd be able to say that without improbable boasting). And if you're waiting for the almost-inevitable 'and then it collapsed, soaking me with freezing rainwater and everyone laughed at me', then you're going to be disappointed. No, today, it performed precisely the function for which it was required.

The rain got harder, but I was invulnerable. It's a good-sized brolly, and even the occasional gust of wind didn't allow the rain to blow under too badly. There's something quite marvelous about standing in a heavy rainstorm in just a teeshirt and jeans, soundly protected by a trusty brolly. All of a sudden, I was transported back to teenage camping holidays, me and some good mates down in the south of France, me lying on my stomach in my sleeping bag in my own little ridge tent, CD on**, coffee brewing on the gas stove in the porch, door halfway unzipped, with the mother of all thunderstorms going on no more than eighteen inches from my face: a vertical curtain of water flooding off the flysheet but not getting in, not disturbing my own warm, dry little world. I might even have to use the word 'cosy'; not something I do lightly. That is a sense of security which you seldom find again: I'm safe, I'm warm, I'm protected, nothing can harm me, I am not going to be bored, I can look forward to enjoying a couple of mugs of French filter coffee and reading a trashy novel, and for once I haven't left the milk and sugar outside, so there is nothing to spoil this. I am on the threshold of manhood, I am coping in a foreign country by myself, I don't need anyone's help because I am OK. I bet we all wish we could get back to that, sometimes.

Child Two eventually arrived. He had a waterproof coat with him, but typically wasn't wearing it. Never mind, though, for my trusty brolly was big enough for both of us.


*don't go thinking that I have a dodgy haircut. I still have all my hair and despite my GOM status I do mess it up a bit with some gel in the mornings. It stings a bit when the rain gets it into your eyes.
**or, considering the distance back into my memory, more likely 'cassette on'.