It was a truly lazy Sunday yesterday. We went out for lunch ( and bumped into our good friends Kamalia, Sheik and Ayesha ) and again went out for dinner ( Sunday dinners have to be a really quicky affair as I have a date with Mark Harmon at 9 pm ). It rained heavily and had to use brollies for the short dash from car to restaurant door.
At the door, the restauranteur had thougtfully provided umbrella stand for our dripping brollies. Dan gestured me to leave my brolly there and as we did, we looked at each other and beamed. " Do you trust the people here ? " he asked and I laughed. It brought us back to one rainy day in 2002, Regent Street, London.
We were walking in the rain, I was pushing Umar's stroller and Dan was shielding me and him from the rain with our trusted black brollie when we got into Esprit on Regent Street. We deposited our very wet brollie at the stand, smiled at the attendant who greeted us hello and chatted with her a bit.
Then we went in, had a look around, found nothing interesting and turned back to leave when I couldn't locate my umbrella. Dan sifted through the other umbrellas and none looked familiar. I asked the very friendly attendant if she had seen our umbrella and she said, " I thought that guy was dodgy, ". She explained that a guy came in without an umbrella, did a 1 minute turn in the shop and took our umbrella before he left. The cheek !!
Dan and I was upset but of course couldn't blame her as there is no tag to say which umbrella belongs to whom. Then she asked if we could give her a minute. She went to her boss who was conveniently standing near rows and rows of Esprit brollies and informed her of our misfortune. She took pity on us, grabbed one delicious looking brollie and handed it to me for free. I was so grateful, I hugged everyone there. The supervisor, the girl standing at the door, the cashier... well not the customers though, although there was a very dishy model material guy that was beaming and smiling at us and I was sure if I had hugged him too, it would appear normal under the circumstances.
Anyhoo..... there we were on a very wet afternoon, walking through London with a brollie that signified charity and compassion of the Londoners. I loved that umbrella. I broke it sometime in May 2004 of overused as I was taking the public transport then. I replaced it with another delicious red Esprit one that is now lying side by side my now retired London one.
To tell you the truth, if we had to buy a brollie, we would always go to Esprit. Even Dan has a long black one in his car !! Hmmm.......
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