It’s official. Apparently we are the household that needs four black parasols across three gardens. Brand loyalty or insane stupidity that we refuse to learn from. Whichever it is we buy more. Every year someone will declare they have “finally found the one” and every year by September it’ll be propped against a fence looking slightly humiliated.
No one ever needs to sell us on their charm. Black won’t fade green with algae the way cream does after a rainy bank holiday.
It doesn’t fight with the other six things already jostling for attention in your garden; the deckchair, the hose reel, whatever sad plant somebody bought in a sunny April illusion and ditched by June.
It just…is.
Being a shape. Doing its job. Not demanding anything of you. It’s almost cosy knowing the one thing outside yours isn’t isn’t trying to be interesting.
It also says a lot about who you live with depending on where/if it gets used. We own the kind of parasol that gets erected solely for the protection it creates over your chosen patch of grass. You can tell by how it’s angled. It’s there to shield a laptop screen from glare during that ‘let’s take this conference call outside for absolutely no reason’ moment. Someone else will have a parasol for the sole purpose of their kid hanging out directly underneath it eating something sticky orange whilst declaring the shade completely “for the ice lolly, not me.” Boths very valid.
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Each refuse to recognise the others use as legitimate.
The real personality test comes with the tilt mechanism.
One of us believes in good ol’ fashioned cranks.
The other swears by push button tilts and we’ve never actually compromised on it. We just buy our own versions and silently judge each other’s every time a strong breeze rolls through. It doesn’t get mentioned again until one breaks clean off in mid August, leaving the loser of the tilt decision very quiet and the winner permanently smug for a solid week.
They don’t tell you about how to store them either. It’s fine when they’re open. Folded away they’re still a monstrous black pole that needs to house somewhere. And by “somewhere” I mean wedged behind the shed door until November when it’s rolled out again, then forgotten about until March and someone goes digging around in the shed looking for a rake and gets smacked in the face by spider webs.
We’ve also had one sensibly blow a good few yards down the street two winters on end before anyone bothered weighing the base down properly. All of us found that hilarious except the person who had to retrieve it from behind next doors bins barefoot.
Still, we’ll just buy another. Does exactly what it says on the tin and takes a lot of beating when summer rolls around, despite our tilting differences.
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