So here's a question: is a patio umbrella something that is meant for when the sun is shining and you want some shade or is it for when the sun isn't shining and you want shelter from the rain? Given my English background but now my living in a warm climate (at last!) I get a little conflicted upon this point. For of course in an English summer an umbrella is something that you erect in the certain knowledge that there will be rain as soon as you bring the tea out: while in warmer climes it's the sun that one is worried about, heatstroke and the like.

So when looking for an outdoor umbrella I'm never quite sure what it is that I should be looking for. Or I'm conflicted about what I should be looking for is perhaps better. Should I be checking for waterproofness? Or the ease with which it can be altered so as to follow the movements of the sun? Am I more concerned about toughness, the ability to keep me dry when battered by the winds and the rain or should I be more concerned with whether the fabric will fade in the sun? Perhaps I should put aside childish worries and simply concentrate on the climate I face now? Well, yes, but old habits die hard, don't they?

So this is where my search for an outdoor patio umbrella has got me: musing on on the complexes my childhood has left me with. What of course I should be doing is, as above, concentrating on the idea that I now live in a warm climate and thus should be looking for shade from the sun. The rain here arrives with the regularity of the calendar, not the on/off minute by minute happenings of England. So that picture there shows what I think I'm going to plump for. It wouldn't be all that much good against rain, not enough coverage on the sides to stop the wind whipping the water under it. But it does perform the job, admirably, of keeping the sun off.