The Umbrella

 

Bugger. I am on my way back to Singapore. From Oz. Today! Now! I am at the airport lounge and I am ready to fly. Time is the thing that actually really flies when you are having fun. 

Blink. 

Holiday gone. 

Time is not our friend and it does not care if we live fast or if we die slow. It pays no heed if we are or if we aren't. It was here before we arrived and it will go on after we leave. Time doesn't care who wins or who loses or if our life span is full or empty. It feels nothing that my holiday is over. Time is indifferent.

It simply doesn't give a shit.

I return to work on Monday and most of the English with whom I work will return to work then too. Those of them who have been back to the Motherland will be all pale and sickly. They will be more insipid than they usually are. It has been cold in Europe. I know this because I have been watching the Weather Channel.  I have chuckled to myself seeing maximum forecasts of 2 degrees for Dublin and one degree for London. Zero for Paris. There was malice in my weather watching.

I was 'got' in the week before I departed for my Summer vacation. I have made a note to avenge myself in the New Year against these English. I will attack them with cunning and guile when their guard is down. I was distracted in the lead up to my break so I let my guard down.

It was raining on a daily basis leading up to Christmas. The rains always came late in the afternoon. There were deluges. Proverbial buckets. It was monsoonal. I had taken to bringing my newest umbrella with me to work. Although I can travel from my house to my office underground for 99% of the journey, I am exposed to the elements for some fifty meters of open ground. I don't like getting wet. My new umbrella is a beauty. It comes with an over-the-shoulder sheath that allows me to wear it like a Samurai sword so carrying it is therefore hands-free.

It amused the English who work in my office that I carried an umbrella to and from work. They are easily amused. I was mocked and scoffed. I however care not a fuck for the thoughts and opinions of the English with whom I work and I scoffed and mocked them back.

So it went and so it often goes. 

When I left the office for the day - a couple of weeks before Christmas, the skies were grey. The clouds were dark and threatening but it was not yet raining. By the time I alighted the train at Novena it was teeming. I pushed my way through the crowds who were hovering and huddling under cover as lightning streaked the sky. I unsheathed my umbrella in one smooth movement and raised it above my head. I clicked the 'release' button and prepared myself to step swiftly but protected into the rain. 

I was instantly showered with hundreds of pieces of confetti. 

The English had filled my umbrella with the contents of every hole punch machine in the building  and I was covered head to toe in tiny round pieces of paper. 

It was brilliant. 

I have been plotting a cunning act of revenge all over Summer. I will enact it next week. 

With passion and fury.