How Expensive is Your Umbrella?
Passing the newish general hospital on my way home and I can’t help noticing (again!) how much it looks like a condominium from the outside - modern lines, striped with balconies and cascading terraces - only the doors that lead to those balconies cannot be opened, lest patients with less than glowing prognoses fling themselves off them. Or so they say.
Meanwhile the ancient sitting in front of me on the bus has farted and sighed simultaneously, which didn’t so much hide the sound of the fart as draw attention to it, and now the smell (a combination of rotting wood, blue cheese and unnamed dead animal) is so sharp and so acrid that my eyes are watering. I’m regretting my choice to sit here. I suppose he can’t help it, what with getting older, but whatever is in his body producing that smell has had time to get better at it.
I look around but there isn’t anywhere to move to, so I get back to looking up Davek on my phone, because I keep getting advertisements. A hundred and seventy-five dollars is a lot of money to ask, especially for an umbrella (the Davek Solo), but I should be grateful, supposedly, because now Davek has a website with prices in Singapore dollars and ships to Singapore. Free shipping for purchases over $100. Oh, joy.
This Singaporean reviewer paid extra to have his brought in, four years ago.
I actually subscribe to the theory that with umbrellas you get what you pay for: I have had phenomenally bad luck with cheap umbrellas, including one memorable incident where a gust of wind completely destroyed a $5 made-in-China folding umbrella as I was walking right by Southern Cross Station in Melbourne, just flipped the thing side out and somehow also dislodged the ribs so that when I shook the umbrella to invert it back to its normal shape, it collapsed completely and hung limp from the still-rigid handle like a bit of sodden washing. I'd had the foresight to bring another cheap umbrella with me, and that managed the last the rest of the trip, but I still had to trudge back to the hotel in the sad drizzle that passes for rain in Melbourne.
But I can’t be spending that kind of money on an umbrella, my brain says, even though I’ll happily spend it on a weekend lunch. These days I carry around a moderately-priced medium-sized Knirps manual folding umbrella. I don't trust automatic umbrellas, because the mechanism always fails me when I ned it most. I can't ever refold those teeny tiny ultralight mini ones, and after one use I end up with a crinkled ball held together with a strap and some velcro. This one has a wide canopy, for its folded size, but is so cleverly made that once it's dry I simply retract it, shake it a couple of times and it rolls right back up as good as nes. I wish is that it had a larger, longer handle: I often wind up holding the metal shaft while running through the rain because my arm and body would lead any lightning straight to ground and I want to minimise the time I spend out in the open.
What I really want (but won’t buy) is the top of the line Davek Savile – metal-tipped, one-of-a-kind wooden shaft, a real gentleman’s umbrella/cane. Very James Bond, but $525 is a touch too much for an umbrella that isn’t connected to an app on my phone, or doesn’t have a sword built-in.
I can see from the faces around me that the emanations from my venerable neighbour have reached them: the man in question is now yawning loudly, and I’m wondering if he’s merely uncouth or trying to hide more arse-tooting. Three people have stood up to get off the bus at the next stop, and a small child appears to have passed out. Her mother, sitting next to her, hasn’t noticed, being too busy retching and trying to comfort the babe in her arms who has begun to wail. I want to warn her that opening her mouth is only exposing more surface area, but that would put me even more at risk.
I’m beginning to wish that the hospital was ahead, not behind. I could get off the bus and crawl to emergency. I might even drag this old man with me, since I suspect that there is something very wrong with him. Instead, I simply get out of my seat and make my way downstairs, where the fumes are less potent, and where the glass in the windows hasn’t yet completely clouded over.
Standing swaying among panic-stricken passengers, I wait till the bus comes to a complete stop before disembarking with all the other people making their escape. We stand around, gazing banefully at the bus as it heads off, the road melting underneath it as the trail of fumes withers the leaves on the roadside trees.
I don’t even cough once.
I leave the crowd standing confusedly at the stop, waiting for the next bus to take them home. I am fortunately not too far from mine, and I slowly lumber in its direction, taking deep breaths of fresh air, tasting the clean, blessed exhaust of passing cars, displacing the miasma from my lungs.
I wonder if the baby is still howling, or if it has finally succumbed.