The argument about whether we needed a 2.7 meter parasol or a 3 meter one went on for the best part of a June, one side insisting the extra thirty centimeters would matter, the other side pointing out that our table seats six and none of us have ever hosted six people who all wanted shade at the same time. It got resolved the way most things in this house get resolved, which is that a storm took the fence panel next door clean off its posts, we panicked about the whole garden, and whoever was at the till that Tuesday bought whatever was in stock. It was the 2.7. Nobody has mentioned the 3 meter one since, mostly out of embarrassment.
What nobody warns you about is the base. The parasol itself turned up in a box that made sense. The base arrived on its own pallet like it had personally offended the delivery company, and took two of us to drag through a side gate that we now measure things against before buying anything else for the garden.
Once it’s up, though, it earns its keep in a way none of us expected to admit out loud.
It sits over a table that has hosted birthday cake, a laptop during three separate work from home emergencies, and one incident involving a toddler, a bowl of spaghetti, and a tilt of the umbrella that meant the sauce went on the umbrella and not on the toddler, which we still count as a win.
The tilt mechanism is the whole personality of the thing, honestly. Push the pole, it leans, the shade moves with the sun instead of you having to move the whole table every hour like some sort of sundial reenactment. One of us finds this delightful.
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Another finds it slightly sinister, like the umbrella is thinking.
It looks good closed, too, which surprised us, folded down into something narrow enough that it doesn’t dominate the garden all winter looking like an abandoned tent pole. Though half of us think it should live in the shed from October and the other half leave it out until the first properly filthy gale forces the issue, which it always does eventually.
The color faded a shade over two summers, which is either normal wear or proof we should have bought the cover that was recommended and ignored, we go back and forth on this constantly and have never once resolved it.
What we actually love, when we stop bickering long enough to say so, is that it turns a garden table covered in someone’s homework, a half drunk mug of tea, and a phone charger nobody remembers plugging in, into somewhere that looks like people meant to sit there. It didn’t need to be simple to do that. It just needed to survive us, and so far, against some fairly determined odds, it has.
