Umbrella etiquette

You might have already guessed it, the sun continued to stay well hidden in this part of the world; that was until this weekend!
Finally we are able to spend several hours outside without getting wet (of course yesterday I did find the only water puddle left in this city and just had to step into it as to not lose the feeling of walking around in wet shoes completely). I however did this with a smile on my face, stretching myself against the gorgeous sunlight.

The last weeks were quite dreadful and did affect my creative blogging abilities in a bad way. When I woke up in the morning all I saw was grey clouds and rain. Sometimes it was just the slightest drizzle as if to make sure that we would not get too excited about starting the new day. On other days whole streams of rain would fall from the sky making you (or at least me) afraid that this whole island would finally drown completely.

On these rainy days it became more and more difficult to navigate my way through town. Have I mentioned that the footpaths here are not exactly spacious? Well you can imagine how it feels to run through town in the morning balancing my tiny umbrella (which is actually completely useless because most of the time its so windy that the umbrella is more of a hindrance than protection from the rain that seems to come from almost any direction).
I noticed on one of these mornings that most Irish men carry enormous umbrellas with them. I have to admit I can see the point, as these umbrellas won’t be destroyed by the wind, but they take up so much space that I feel continuously afraid that they will scratch off my face the moment I don’t pay attention (here I should probably mention that most Irish men are shorter than me and hold their umbrellas conveniently at my face level).

I wish someone would invent some kind of etiquette with regards to umbrellas (or would build bigger footpaths). People mostly walk around with their umbrellas as if they are the only people on the street completely ignoring oncoming pedestrians who jump out of the way, afraid of being scratched or being hit by the puddles of water pouring from one of these enormous umbrellas. It would be hilarious to watch if I would not be part of the crowd that does all the jumping.

Well these days are hopefully over for the moment as we are all hoping that the sunny spell will last and we will get to enjoy at least a few days of sun, and who knows, maybe I will even get to wear sandals for a whole day☺