The
first rain showers of April, scattered, brief and chilly as they were in the
past week, have brought out something more than just the promise of May
flowers.
Spring
showers prompt us to drag from winter storage our most mundane and underrated
item: the umbrella.
The
rain umbrella, as commonplace and homely as a mud puddle, is a proclaimer of
winter’s end. It signals hibernation for snow shovels and the appearance of
summer fun brollies unfolded on patios, beaches and stuffed into golf bags.
Mundane
as it is, the common umbrella has been around since just after the Stone Age and
has intriguing stories to tell.
It
is believed to have been invented in China in the 11th century B.C.
as a parasol to shield people of high standing from the sun. Its name comes
from the Latin word umbros, meaning shade or shadow.
Umbrellas
appeared in ancient Greece and Rome in the first century BC, mainly as sun
shades held by the slaves of nobles. Somewhere along the way someone figured
out the umbrella could be used as a shield against rain if its silk was
waterproofed.
The
umbrella was seen as a feminine accessory until the mid-1700s when Jonas
Hanway, an English philanthropist, became the first Londoner to carry an
umbrella, suffering the indignities of coachmen who hooted at him and called
him a sissy. A visit to a rainy London
street now confirms Hanway as a trend setter far ahead of his time.
Hundreds,
if not thousands, of modifications and patents followed and brought us the
collapsible umbrella, the telescopic umbrella; even an umbrella that can
withstand winds of up to 100 kilometres per hour without turning inside out.
One
especially notable modification was the $17,000 Kevlar umbrella carried by the
bodyguards of former French president Nicholas Sarkozy. It would not stop
bullets but would reduce their impact and provide some protection from stones
or other materials thrown at Sarkozy from above.
That
umbrella will not afford him much protection in prison, where he is headed if
convicted of corruption and influence peddling charges laid against him
recently.
Security
agencies often used the umbrella in their secret work. They fitted umbrella
shafts with retractable blades and even modified them to fire flechettes,
steel-point projectiles.
Back
in 1978 the KBG assassinated Bulgarian dissident writer Georgi Markov with a
poison-tipped umbrella. Markov was standing on London’s Waterloo Bridge when a
KBG agent walked by him, stabbing him in the thigh with a ricin-laced umbrella
tip.
When
the Bulgarian government collapsed in 1989 umbrellas modified to fire little
darts were found in one government building.
Most
of the world’s umbrellas now are made in China. One town, Songxia, is known as
the Umbrella City because it is reported to have 1,200 umbrella manufacturers
with 40,000 participating workers, some of who work in factories while others work
at home.
The
Songxia Umbrella Industrial Park is said to have the capacity to produce 500
million umbrellas.
Umbrellas
became symbols of the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement in 2014. Protesters
carried them not just as a symbol but as protection against tear gas and pepper
spray used by police.
There
don’t appear to be any accurate or believable figures on how many umbrellas are
sold worldwide each year. The number has to be in the hundreds of millions. U.S.
statistics show that Americans buy 33 million umbrellas annually.
Sales
flourish because so many people misplace their umbrellas. Last year 10,000 left
behind umbrellas were turned in to the London, England public transit lost and
found. Only a small per cent were reclaimed.
The
umbrella is ubiquitous in song and movies. Who could forget Mary Poppins or Singin’ in the Rain?
The
umbrella song that no one remembers, but the one I can never forget, is the
famous pre-Second World War tune The
Umbrella Man.
It
was always high on my mother’s play list when she was in a singing mood. In
fact, I am told she belted it out to a night club crowd in an impromptu performance
after a few drinks. The nightclub patrons apparently went wild.
“Toodle - luma luma
Toodle - luma luma
Toodle - oh lay
Any umbrellas, any umbrellas
To mend today?”
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