My First Umbrella; A story in footnotes

I have never used an umbrella before. Which I guess is surprising because I’m 24 and a half (today) and I live in England, but it really doesn’t come up that much. I’ve made use of umbrellas being held by other people but for the most part I made my way. For the most part, I just get wet.

The idea makes me feel really uncomfortable for some reason, there are a few odd things which do. At the start of my degree I showed up with an Iceland carrier bag, borrowed a pen off the person I was sitting next to and took notes on the wrapper from a pack of rolos. The pen guy then challenged me to only use Iceland carrier bags for the whole time I was there, and 3 years later I had one at my graduation. Eat me out you smarmy dick, with your fountain pens.

Now carrying anything other than a plastic carrier bag makes me really uncomfortable, and I felt the same about umbrellas. Just seemed odd to me. Also seemed like it would be admitting that I was scared of getting wet. Which I’m not.

But tonight I’m going to have to face it, because I have a date with a girl so forcibly beautiful that I found myself doing ridiculous things, like filling my wallet with the business cards of other women who had asked me out so that if she noticed she’d know that I picked her over them. An act so embarrassing that I’m only revealing it now in hopes that you’ll laugh at me until I never do it again.

Of course I don’t own an umbrella. But I remember finding one in the cupboard when I moved in that belonged to someone who used to live here. Probably either the Latvian transvestite named Girtz Berzs, or Mei Lee… the woman who never cancelled her Matalan subscription and still gets valentine’s day cards…

On the wall of my flat I have a tree of all the people who lived here before me, made from the letters they receive. Sometimes there’s an old birthday card that I find in a cupboard somewhere. I like trying to piece together who is who from the photographs they left here. For a while my favourite was Girtz Berzs, because how can’t you love someone called that? He left a bag here, which contained Latvian currency, old cassette tapes of surf music and a pair of size 14 knee high white leather boots. But two years ago , on valentine’s day, a card came through the post addressed to Mei Lee. From my wall charts I’ve discerned that Mei Lee lived here maybe five years ago, which is a long time to be pining for someone. I normally don’t like to open them, the contents are nothing to do with me. But this time I gave in. Whoever sent it obviously hasn’t spoken to her in five years, and I really wanted to know what it would say. So I opened up the envelope. It was incredibly simple. Just a folded white piece of paper with her name on the front. And inside it said… “My heart is so full of you.” Now those of you who know me know, I have a totally justified love of valentines day. So maybe that’s why this little message got to me but it did. I went into a kind of daze and did something I don’t really understand. Like one time when I was driving home to Manchester and started thinking about something, then pulled myself together and I was 2 miles away from Edinburgh. I don’t know the way to Edinburgh when I’m conscious, I have no idea what happened that day, but I didn’t waste it, I went in and got myself a pie from a fish and chip shop. This was the kind of place where the garnish they put on the pie was two chips in a cross position. Then I drove home. But seeing this plain white paper folded over with the little crumples down the side, like it was folded by arthritic fingers. I went fucking barmy. I picked up this piece of paper, went into my own stash and pulled out a blank envelope, stuffed the paper inside, ran outside without my shoes on and pushed it back into the post box. What was I trying to do? I have no idea. Just get rid of it? Hope somehow it would get to her? Something equally idiotic. But maybe I just wanted it to be sent to some colossal pile of undelivered post somewhere. Is that comforting? I never can tell.

I pull out a bright yellow umbrella from under my spare bed and see that it’s covered in adverts for Schweppes lemonade for some reason. I briefly consider turning it inside out but decide that’s a fucking stupid thing to do.

I set off on my journey and I’m 2 minutes out of the door when calamity strikes! There’s a small alleyway that leads out onto the road that’s too small for the umbrella. At first I try lifting it above the walls and walking through anyway but soon find myself stuck there, arms in the air as high as they can go, desperately clinging on to the thing keeping me from getting soaked, unable to walk even a step further.

A reconstruction

And suddenly, as it does in these situations. A song came into my head.

“Guess miiine is not the fiirst… heeart brooookeeeen…”

One day a few years ago, me and 3 of my friends sat down to watch a film called [REC]. I’m not normally someone who gets scared by films, and I know a lot of people who were completely unaffected by this film, but for me it was utterly terrifying. So much so that when my friend let out an audible yelp at one point in the film, not one of us in the room mocked him for it. In the dark I started to become really afraid, I couldn’t sleep properly. So I decided to take matters into my own hands. Rather than replaying the climax of the film, I would replay, the least frightening scene in the world. The scene I chose was Kristin Chenoweth singing “Hopelessly devoted to you” on Pushing Daisies. It worked, I calmed down and went to sleep. But as I repeated this over the coming weeks, this became a Pavlovian response to fear.  Every time someone turned the light off I would hear the song come into my head.  This got worse and worse, eventually replacing fear within me altogether. I would be walking along the road and the song would come into my head and I would have to scramble my head around and look for the thing I was afraid of. The height of these experiences was when I was up a ladder doing a bit of filming for a friend of mine. My job was to hang bunting on a lamp post while looking like a member of a fascist overruling organisation, so I was wearing a blue jump suit and a beret, up on a lamp post on Holloway Road using a ladder we borrowed for a book shop because the university wouldn’t lend us one, claiming it was a health and safety risk. Like a good boy, I had someone at the bottom holding the ladder as I reached up to hang the decorations. But for some reason. I can hear her sing. You know I’m just a… fool who’s willing… I looked around, what’s happened to trigger it? The person holding the ladder had dropped one of the decorations they were holding and passing up to me. They saw it starting to blow away and couldn’t reach it to stop. So as our flags flew away, my assistant let go of the ladder and ran after them. I looked down at the road and saw a bus approaching in the distance as my ladder started to tip over in the wind. I leaned to my right to try to counter it but it was too late by some way. The ladder slid over its centre of gravity and started plummeting into the street as the bus made its way towards me. There wass nothing I could do anymore to stop the ladder from falling, but I remember taking the time to look at the person who had let go of the ladder as I fell into the street. Hopelessly devoteeed… I leapt off the rung of the ladder, pushing it into the street with the pushback as I grabbed onto the lamp post and hugged it tightly. Looking out into the street to see the bus screech to a halt before it hits the ladder, I slide slowly inch by inch down the lamp post, before falling off just before the bottom, just a few minor scrapes and bruises. Who knows though, if I had been scared instead of just singing, would I have thought quickly enough to do that? Did the grease soundtrack save my life? “Probably not.” I thought, as I took the ladder back to the book shop, bleeding from my arms, and set it down in their corridor. I shrugged my shoulders at them and left without saying anything.

And here I am in an alleyway, in no danger at all with the song in my head again, while my neighbours, obviously well practiced at using umbrellas, are laughing at me. I push upwards and walk back to the entrance, and make my way through with a closed umbrella. But me and my umbrella have bonded now. We went through something together. We’re a fucking TEAM!

In recreating that moment, I cable tied my clothes to coat hangers and then to the umbrella, and walked out to the alleyway. As I fastened it up to the wall and started taking photos a 12 year old child walked past and had to walk underneath my experiment. I waved at him.I like to think that child is now going insane trying to figure out what I was doing.

I carry on walking to the station with my new best friend. Passing by, I decide that one of my favourite things to see is people in really expensive looking hats in the rain trying to smile. If I had the spare digits I’d take a photo but I’m hand in hand with my brolly.

On the train, there’s a man sat opposite with his daughter, who pulls out a map from his pocket. It’s soaking wet, and disintegrates completely as he passes it to his daughter, who laughs at him. They are lost now. But it’s funny.

I think to myself, what will I do when I get there? What’s the proper umbrella etiquette? I know I’m not supposed to have it open indoors, but where do I put it? Won’t it make the seats wet? Do I hang it up with my coat? As I enter the pub I decide instead to just carry it around and use it like a cool walking stick. I use it to prop myself up and check the business cards in my wallet are organised so the prettiest girl is at the front. And I grin as I realise how nice it is that someone makes me realise I’m a fucking moron. And I let myself think what I would write on a folded piece of paper if I was forced to. Probably  something about a sandcastle. Or a trout recipe. I like trout.

But she doesn’t show up.

Which under the circumstances (which I won’t explain) is completely fair, and probably the best thing that could have happened. I spend the evening talking to some other people in the pub, and make a lot of new friends, and have a genuinely great evening actually. There’s a girl who’s a film director who wants me to send her some ideas or short scripts. I think about plots that involve umbrellas.

One of my favourite things to do on the tube (there are a number) is to try to “Sherlock” the people sat opposite me. By this I mean, to observe closely and try to figure out things about them. That guys left shoe is more worn down than his right so he walks with a limp. That sort of thing. The problem is of course, I never know whether I was right or not. There’s no way of telling if I was just talking shit.

A woman gets on. She looks to be in her late 20’s, and has dark red hair and freckles. There are seats there but she stands anyway. Her hair isn’t wet but she doesn’t have coat so the rain must have stopped. She looks as though she is about to cry. She puts her hand into her pocket and pulls out a pink envelope which has been carefully opened, not ripped, meaning she has read it before, and it probably meant something to her. As she slides her finger inside she pulls out a card and begins to read it. She does not look at the front, only the inside, which says “Well done”. She closes the card, and then folds it into quarters, putting it back into her pocket. A different pocket than the one she took it from. She does not intend to look at it again. She scans the train for other people, noticing the seats. She still stands. Her cheeks are red and flustered, but the red is generalised, not the shape you get when you’ve been crying. She notices a man across the carriage eyeing her up, and immediately closes her coat to cover herself. She does not turn away from him though, she faces him, her coat held closed in a single fist, she wants him to stop, but she doesn’t want him to think she is intimidated. He turns around, and she lets go. She holds the envelope in her other hand and looks at it again, there is no name on it. She crumples it up in her fist and drops it on the floor, before turning to look out of the window at the darkness. In between Angel and Old street there is an abandoned tube station, where the diggers gave up halfway through. If you watch the pipes for when they disappear, you can see the abandoned shovels and wooden boxes for a few seconds, before the pipes return. She notices me writing notes on a plain white piece of paper, folded in half. She looks up and down the carriage to check no-one is there, and then looks up at me. She smiles as though she really needs it. “What are you writing?” She asks. But I can’t be bothered.

When I get off the train, the rain has stopped. But I put my umbrella up anyway. I can claim I never noticed. I decide I’m going to try to start up a new greeting, whereby instead of waving, I raise my umbrella. If you look interesting, I do it twice in a quick, popping motion. I walk back to my house and see how many people I can get to acknowledge me, or respond with a friendly gesture. Three do.

Umbrellas are pretty cool

~ by Sandy Nicholson on June 18, 2011.