A new sight on the English high street

15/5/2012 We are deep into May now and the drought and hose-pipe ban continues with heavy rain day in day out. I have noticed increasing numbers of people like me, holding up broken umbrelli like dripping thorn bushes above their heads. Something dire has happened to the umbrella making business; you buy one for £5 or more and within two uses it's dead as a squashed roadside crow. Perhaps the insistent British rain is full of acid, not sure, but almost as soon as you open them out the spokes rust and resemble the desiccated legs of dead insects. Not many of us can afford to keep buying new each time we have a down pour, which is almost every day, so you will see us going about with these bunches of wet, rusting metal twigs held above our heads.