An Irishman's Diary

I MET a friend recently who was carrying a square umbrella and I thought him slightly eccentric. It was a state-of-the-art job, apparently: not only waterproof, but featuring anti-inversion technology, tested in a wind tunnel or something, that meant it never turned inside out. Even so, I said to myself: square umbrellas - that'll never catch on.

Then the sheer logic of it hit me, and soon I was wondering why we ever put up with round umbrellas. There's no sense to them, especially in urban areas. After all, part of the reason that houses are square is that they fit together better. So why shouldn't people queuing for a bus in the rain have umbrellas with parallel sides, that could complement each other and maximise cover? There would be similar benefits in pedestrian traffic. I have argued before that people with golf umbrellas should be banned from side-streets and narrow footpaths, or at least forced to do a special driving test until they master the safe use of these monstrosities on the public thoroughfare.

But at least if square umbrellas became standard, passing manoeuvres would be less hazardous. A similar principle surely helps explain the shape of cars.

With square umbrellas, lovers could stroll in the rain, hand-in-hand, without getting their sleeves wet. As it is, due to the incompatibility of brollies in the circular format, a couple will typically resort to sharing a single model. And not only do they both end up wet, but - by the by - this arrangement has also been responsible for one of the most annoying pop songs ever recorded.

It was by the Hollies, in 1964, and it still turns up on the radio too often. You know how it goes: "Bus stop, wet day, she's there, I say/ Please share my umbrella./Bus stop, bus goes, she stays, love grows/ Under my umbrella." Now you remember it, and you'll be singing it all day. Sorry about that.

Round umbrellas have been a boon for dance choreographers, it's true. No stage show would be complete without a scene in which dancers whirl them by their sides to suggest spinning wheels. And of course Gene Kelly's legendary dance sequence in Singing in the Rain would not look nearly so good with a square umbrella.

But we're talking here about the device's primary function, which is to keep its user dry. It is perhaps telling that, in the aforementioned scene, Gene Kelly ends up soaked and abandoning his brolly to a passer-by.

Although round umbrellas have been with us for thousands of years, their continued dominance in this part of the world may be due to two groups of people who have traditionally tended to elevate beauty over function: ie, women and the French.

Just like moisturiser, until recently, umbrellas used to be considered something for the female of these islands only. An 18th-century travel writer called Jonas Hanway breached the taboo in England, braving stares by using one in public until it became respectable for other men, by which time many called their umbrellas after him. As late as 1770, Londoners still took Hanway for a French tourist because of his habit.

The French love affair with the parapluie is well recorded by Impressionist painters, including Renoir. But it reached a height in the town of Aurillac - the French umbrella capital - where one of the top producers still unveils a spring and autumn collection each year, and also guarantees each of its premium products for life.

Aurillac's industry has declined in recent decades, mainly because of cheap imports from China. And this highlights the problem that has held umbrella development back traditionally. People are reluctant to splash out on a good one because they know they'll just leave it behind somewhere as soon as the sun reappears.

Irish people in particular are cursed with a mental condition that causes us to regard wet weather as an aberration. When it rains again after a dry spell, we say: "Typical!" And it is. But we don't mean the word literally, or we wouldn't always spit it out as if the climate had personally betrayed us, before we troop off to buy a cheap replacement for the brolly we left behind the last time the sun came out.

Until recently, revolutionary developments in umbrella-making have been the preserve of secret services. Remember poor old Georgi Markov, the Bulgarian dissident who, 30 years ago next month, was stabbed in the thigh by a lethally modified KGB umbrella? Now at last, with the Cold War long ended, maybe civilian users can reap some of the benefits of scientific advance.

I'm not sure about the anti-inversion technology in my friend's model. You would need to be strong to handle one of those things while crossing the Ha'penny Bridge in a storm, or you could take off like Mary Poppins. But certainly the square shape looks like the way forward in Ireland.

Thus equipped, wherever crowds gather in the rain - at a bus stop, a football match, or even smoking in a pub doorway - their umbrellas can be deployed in formation, locked together like the shields of Roman soldiers, or riot squads. Their holders can shuffle back and forth underneath, as required (to let somebody into the pub, say). And in so doing, Irish people will at long last have formed a united front against their most ancient enemy.