The Underwhelming performance of Umbrellas

It's Autumn in Australia, and Autumn is a season typically characterised by increasingly cool mornings and evenings, but pleasant, sunny days, and mild temperatures. However, the weather has recently been much more wintery. At the beginning of the week we had three days of continual rain, storms and chilly temperatures (by Australian standards anyway). It can be very difficult to stay dry when it rains all the time. Difficult? Okay, virtually impossible.

Umbrellas do well in their designated task of protecting one from rain...unless it's windy as well. A gusty, wet day usually sees the demise of many unfortunate rain guardians. It's indiscriminate carnage really. Smaller umbrellas, the type that are convenient to carry in your bag, in case it rains, are the generally the first victims. Larger, sturdier versions are not immune to this destruction either. I lost a dear friend this week, a faithful servant who made the ultimate sacrifice for me. (See picture above right.)

If you get one large and strong enough to give you a hope of real defence, and let's not forget that unless the rain is vertical, you'll still get wet - you are armed with a cumbersome device which makes doing just about anything extremely awkward.

I love it when you get to your car and try to close the umbrella before, or at the same time as, you try to get in. Love that little shower, and the water which flicks all over you car's floor and seats.

When the weather is really appalling, one has to realise the mortal limitations of umbrellas, and just accept the tragic inevitabilities...or somewhat comical outcomes as seen in the video below. I hope the weather is all right wherever you are in this wonderful world of ours.

U is for Opposite

“Are we okay?”

“What do you mean?” she asked without taking her eyes off the dishes.

“I don’t feel like we talk to each other anymore. Not properly. We say stuff in passing and throw words and sentences like a food fight at a birthday party. There’s no real connection.”

“’No connection,’ that’s an interesting phrase.”

Lilijana was a true champion of the put down, shutdown comment. Disturbingly unsympathetic.”

-          Loathe Your Neighbor ch.10

It would have been so easy to write about the ubiquity of umbrellas but I decided to sing the praises of a powerful prefix instead. Two letters which, when applied to the front of a word, turn the whole world upside down. Two letters that take what is good and make it bad. This deadly combination can make something useable into something unuseable, something wanted into something unwanted. That which is lovely, kind, righteous, or peaceful may be transformed in a flash. In spite of its reputation as a negative prefix it can also be a force for good. A humble person may consider themselves unworthy or undeserving while others deem them unselfish. Although it is not unnatural for writers to be unknown it is unquestionably uncomfortable for them to remain so. Alas the world is unfair and unwarranted actions undo the unassimilated and uninitiated. Unbeknownst to me this post has fallen into an unhealthy and unattractive assortment of unplanned dribble. Unfortunately, once begun an odyssey is not easily abandoned, and it would be unreasonable of you, the reader, to expect it of me. It may be unrealistic and unimaginably unwise, and calling a blog post an odyssey may be unadulterated hyperbole, but I beg your indulgence for I am not unaware that you are not uncaring souls, and you understand that un at the beginning of a word is not always a prefix. I am unfinished. What's your favourite un word?