The Beach Umbrella

Don't trust me - I'm evil!

When you're on the beach, what provides equal amounts of hassle and entertainment?  No, it's not a land dwelling shark.  There's nothing funny about a land dwelling shark.  It's large, it's round and it's often stripy.  Not a sunburnt tourist but a God damned beach umbrella.  Beach umbrellas. Why do we even bother.  They're nothing but trouble.  The coast is inevitably windy so unless you've got some sort of anchor attached to your beach umbrella then you can be fairly certain that at some point during the day the beach umbrella is going to make a bid for freedom.  And as I said before this can be a hassle.  Or this can be highly entertaining.  It very much depends on whether or not that beach umbrella belongs to you or someone else.  Because watching someone else running down the beach, chasing their beach umbrella can be hilarious but when you're the one doing the chasing it's often embarrassing and humiliating.  And that's what you get for laughing at someone else's misfortune.  You end up running down the beach, bikini bottoms working their way up, bikini top working its way down and then the next thing you know you've fallen over a small child and fallen into a pit.  A pit dug by the small child.  And your umbrella is half way down the beach attacking unsuspecting tourists.  I suppose you could always ignore the beach umbrella and give it up as lost but someone would know it was yours.  Someone would have been watching and laughing and knowing that you were letting your beach umbrella attack other beach goers.  It's enough to sully a reputation.  So you have to chase your beach umbrella.  Our beach umbrella leapt out of the sand the other day and hurtled off down the beach.  I jumped up just in time to see a startled man holding the umbrella.  He'd caught it mid flight.  I apologised on behalf of the umbrella and he confirmed he was unharmed, merely startled.  Well, an umbrella in the face will do that.  Those things move fast.  So fast in fact that they can fly out to sea, as witnessed today by Bear Z, Rabby and myself.  Luckily for us, it wasn't our beach umbrella that had decided to take an ocean voyage.  This was a red and white striped thing that literally bounced across the beach before ploughing its way through a group of swimmers and over the heads of some unsuspecting surfers.  Nowhere is safe.  A beach umbrella can attack you from anywhere.  I saw a woman in a swimsuit make a vague attempt to follow her beach umbrella but she quickly gave up when she saw how quickly it had headed out to sea.  But there were some valiant swimmers out there who grabbed the thing and pinned it down.  It was a surreal sight to watch three or four swimmers trying to bring in the beach umbrella that refused to go back down.  I think one of them finally managed to tackle it into submission and the beach umbrella was returned to its red faced owner.  I think that beach umbrellas have an agenda of their own.  They're obviously not happy sitting on the sand and giving shade.  They'll do everything they can to avoid this.  Turn inside out.  Flip upside down.  Flop over.  Head out to sea.  I'm starting to think the beach umbrellas are more hassle than they're worth.  I might just invest in a really big hat instead.