I Own Seven Umbrellas. Or Is It Eight? I Never Know

I've Never Once Been Dry

I own seven umbrellas.

I’ve counted them, more than once, on dry days when I’ve happened to come across them.

There are seven.

There may be eight.

I can’t be certain because they don’t all stay in the same place, and the ones I’m aware of aren’t necessarily the only ones.

I’ve never owned an umbrella deliberately.

I’ve never sat down and thought: I should get an umbrella. I’ve never browsed umbrellas. I’ve never compared umbrellas.

Every umbrella I own was bought in the rain, standing outside somewhere, already wet, in a small shop that sells them for £8 to people in exactly my situation.

I’ve been doing this for thirty years.

The Umbrellas I Know About

There’s a small blue one from a service station near Leicester, bought in 2019.

There’s a large golf umbrella that belongs to someone else, technically, though I can’t remember who. It’s been in our house long enough that the original owner has presumably forgotten about it.

It’s enormous. It could shelter a family of four. I’ve never used it.

There are three identical black ones.

I don’t know where the three identical black ones came from. Nobody in this house bought three identical black umbrellas. Nobody bought one. They’ve appeared, separately, over a period of years, and now they sit together in the hall cupboard like they planned it.

There’s one with a broken spoke that I’ve been meaning to throw away since 2021.

There’s one I bought last Tuesday.

The one I bought last Tuesday is already missing.

The Pattern

The pattern is consistent.

It rains. I’m out. I don’t have an umbrella. I buy one. I bring it home. I put it somewhere sensible.

The umbrella is then absorbed into the house and is not seen again until a sunny day three weeks later, at which point it surfaces in a cupboard I’ve already searched twice.

I’ve tested this. The last time it rained, I went looking. I checked the hall cupboard. I checked the coat rack. I checked under the stairs. I checked the boot of the car. I checked the bag I’d been using the previous month. I checked the other bag.

I found nothing.

Three days later, when the rain had stopped, I opened the hall cupboard for an unrelated reason and four umbrellas fell out.

I don’t know where they’d been.

I don’t think they’d been anywhere. I think they’d been in the hall cupboard the whole time, and they’d simply chosen not to be available to me while I was looking for them.

The Golf Umbrella

The golf umbrella is the exception to the pattern.

I always know where the golf umbrella is. The golf umbrella is too big to lose. It lives by the back door, leaning against the wall, where it has been for about four years.

I’ve never used it.

It’s too big to take anywhere. It's so big that taking it anywhere feels like a public hazard.

The spokes are at eye level for half the people I'd pass.

In any wind it becomes a sail, and a man being towed down a pavement by his own umbrella is not the kind of man I want to be.

It’s the only umbrella I own that works.

It’s also the only umbrella I’ll never use.

The Most Recent Failure

I was out last Tuesday when it started raining.

I stood in a doorway for a while, conducting the mental inventory I’ve already described, and concluded that none of my seven umbrellas were with me. I went into a shop and bought an eighth.

It was £8. It was small. It was blue, like the one from the service station, which I suspect I bought from the same chain of shops at a different location and point in my life.

I used it to walk to the car.

I put it on the back seat.

The Friday After

My wife was in the car with me on Friday.

She opened the glove compartment to get something out, and an umbrella fell into her lap. It was small and blue.

She said: “Is this yours?”

I said it might be, it could be the one I bought on Tuesday.

She said: “Where did you put it on Tuesday?”

I said: The back seat.

She said: “This was in the glove compartment.”

I said yes I saw that.

She said: “How did it get from the back seat to the glove compartment?”

I said I didn’t know.

She said: “Did you put it there?”

I said no, I’d put it on the back seat, definitely, and I hadn’t moved it, and I hadn’t been in the car between Tuesday and Friday.

She held the umbrella up. She turned it over in her hands.

She said: “So it moved itself?”

I said it must have done.

She said: “Right!”

She put the umbrella back in the glove compartment.

Neither of us mentioned it again.

The Forecast

Tomorrow is forecast to be sunny.

I know where two of the umbrellas are. The golf umbrella is by the back door. The small blue one is in the glove compartment, allegedly.

The other five are somewhere in this house, doing whatever umbrellas do when they’re not being used, which is apparently most of the time.

I’ll go to bed tonight knowing roughly where the umbrellas are.

I’ll wake up tomorrow to a dry day.

It’ll rain on Thursday and I’ll be out.

I won’t have an umbrella with me. I’ll stand in a doorway for a while. I’ll think about the seven umbrellas I own.

I’ll buy an eighth.

Or is it a ninth?

I’ve lost count.