Umbrellas to die for
It’s raining again – and you forgot your umbrella. What can you do?
Of course you can buy a brolly from Boots, or even from a street vendor. You can buy one of those cheap and ugly fold-up black umbrellas, that will last a couple of outings before it blows inside out. You see dead umbrellas rolling along Tottenham Court road sometimes in a rainstorm, deserted by their owners…
Or you can turn to the professionals. That means a visit to James Smith & Sons, at 53, New Oxford Street. They’ve been there since 1830, behind their splendid Victorian shop front. They still make their own umbrellas – and they’re still a family business.
Just browsing in the shop is fun. Their umbrellas come in all shapes and sizes from a parasol-like lady’s umbrella with an elegant thin leather-covered handle and lilac floral pattern cover, to country styled umbrellas in plaid with robust wooden handles.
These are not cheap umbrellas; a nice one will set you back sixty or seventy pounds. So you will want to keep a tight hold on your brolly.
And here I’d like to give you a personal warning. I bought a lovely umbrella from James Smith’s. It was purple, with a kind of snakeskin pattern, and a leather handle, and a little tassel, and I loved it immensely. And then one day I left it in the cloakroom at a hotel after a drinks function.
I came back the next day with my cloakroom ticket; but it was gone.
So perhaps it’s not surprising that the shop gives good advice on its web site (www.james-smith.co.uk). “Warning; It is inadvisable to lend your James Smith umbrella to even your closest friend. Give them our address instead.”
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POSTED IN: Just a Little Bit Weird - Fun & Quirky Places, Shopping
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