so, with summer passing us by and the premature creep of winter approaching we’ve had a few early “rain days”..
Over the years I’ve owned several umbrellas, most of them acquired, with only one Nike golf umbrella that I can recall having purchased, in the last 2 years I honestly can’t remember using ANY of them.. That is, until 3 weeks ago.
I was at the boot of my car in a downpour, collecting a box, my back getting splattered and dripped on from the tailgate and feeling pretty miserable about the whole situation, when I noticed the brolly I’d thrown into the boot a year ago that had come free with some oil (I’m pretty sure thats where it came from anyway) and I simply thought “ah, sod it” and up it went.
I strolled back across the car park like a king under this large black canopy, reached the doorway, gave the brolly the ‘ol pump and shake and was, almost instantly converted.
Over the following 2 weeks that brolly got a lot of use; the August weather got progressively colder and wetter and each time I found myself under that canopy I felt like a BOSS.
It was only when the wind came in that I realised how flawed this cheap (free) brolly was, and, I suspect how most “off the shelf” umbrellas respond to anything stronger than the lightest breath in the sky – it quickly turned from glorious water sheild into an inverted soup bowl, collecting the wet stuff right above my noggin and making a good job of streaming down the handle and into my sleeve. Soggy armed, I quickly fell out with my brolly.
And so began my quest to find the perfect umbrella.
I don’t really know what I was expecting to find as I typed “best umbrella” into Google, some sort of hydrophobic, ballistic chain mail, I don’t know, but after several iterations of search criteria I stumbled upon the round tipped, beautifully engineered brolly made by Blunt Umbrella, a New Zealand based company that has somehow managed to make a brolly that in my opinion is as eye catching in form as it is function.
For a few days I kept visiting the companies website ( https://www.bluntumbrellas.com ) and poured over the various sizes and designs. I really wanted to get the “G2” golf version as this comes with a cool shoulder sling but the additional cost seemed disproportional to the gain in canopy size and weight, whilst the design really appealed to me I just couldn’t justify the bigger price tag.
So I settled on the “XL” model in Charcoal colour (I’m currently planning my wedding and with that future on the horizon in the event of a bad weather day it will match my suit!)
Am I happy with my purchase? Well, the Sun has returned (school holidays have finished so of course it has!) so I’ll update this post in a few weeks when the English weather will have given me chance to test it!
[UPDATE] It’s awesome, really pleased with my purchase, nay, investment (it did after all replace something that was free so i guess the word investment is more appropriate. {/UPDATE]