If you steal my sunshine...

It was my birthday on Saturday. In past years I've had very silly picnics and booze-a-thons, but it's been a pretty difficult few weeks and I just felt like spending it with my family.

And shopping.

I'll post my purchases later, when I've photographed them. Meanwhile, a post about my lovely dad's birthday present to me - I spent a happy hour in my favourite umbrella, swordstick, cane and life-preserver emporium, choosing my present.



I picked out two umbrellas - a big one for dark, rainy days, and a small one for toting about town when the weather is less inevitably filthy.



The little one:





It makes me think of Gustav Klimt paintings and the endless joy of school days at the back of the classroom, armed with a shakeable gold pen and a shiny new exercise book.

And the big one:





The photo doesn't do it justice - it's got a nice weight to it, with a wooden shaft and exquisite thick silky fabric which shimmers beautifully in the sunlight.

Two of my favourite things about JS&S:

- they can put together a semi-bespoke umbrella for you, for little more than the standard brolly price, because they keep the heads and frames in their workshop downstairs. I very nearly plumped for a Quant-patterned brolly with a crimson resin parrot for a handle, but they hadn't the parrot head in stock.

- they stamp their larger brollies with their beautiful silver nameplate:



I think I should start naming my umbrellas.

This concludes my umbrella geekery for this week.

Dry the rain

My biggest weakness is umbrellas. It started a year and a half ago, when someone left a £100 umbrella in the club where I work... and still hadn't claimed it after six months. By the law of finders-keepers, it was mine. All 34 inches of Liberty-print silk and sturdy fox frame and maple handle and silver engraving. Miiiiine. And so the obsession began.

My favourite shop in London for brollies is James Smith & Sons, a small, elegant gentlemen's outfitters style emporium on New Oxford St. They do bespoke umbrellas, if you can afford such things, and even mend broken brollies [as I found after a drunken friend shattered the resin cane-top on my favourite parapluie].



I'm not altogether pleased with the manic explosion of florals across the fashion landscape this spring, and I certainly won't be stepping into flouncy little teadresses for spring. But a floral umbrella seems like a gorgeous and practical way to indulge in the trend on my own terms. My favourites:











In the end, not having £120 to spend, I went for this one:



Try out these sites for unusual umbrellas:

Signature Bella
Umbrella Boutique
Simply Umbrellas
Brollies Galore