How I discovered my umbrella’s magical powers

I’ve just been reunited with my magic umbrella for the fourth time in a decade. Hewn from oak by Swaine Adeney Brigg, this umbrella was a wildly generous 30th-birthday present from my old friend (and mutual best man) Aster Crawshaw. It was almost immediately purloined from the cloakroom of Joe Allen’s in Covent Garden. I mentioned this in an interview I gave to the Daily Telegraph, and was amazed to receive an email from Swaine Adeney Brigg offering me a replacement. All was well for several years until I realised the umbrella was again missing. I had no memory of the last time I’d carried it. Too bereft to buy a replacement, many umbrella-less months passed until, one night, I was in a minicab on the way home from supper with my brother. ‘My friend, I remember you!’ the driver exclaimed, ‘I think maybe you left an umbrella in my car last year?’ So I did.