I hate umbrellas. As well as being really hard to deal with in windy weather and threatening eye injuries to everyone in range, they really are a burden to cart about and so, usually, they are in the wrong place when it starts to rain.
Today’s invention is a new way to stay dry.
Don’t just ignore those guys selling Big Issue magazine (because you don’t want to read that politically active stuff and you know they drive home in a Merc each day). When it begins to rain, seek them out. That’s because in future they will sell you a low-cost poncho.
Each of these will be preprepared on days threatening rain by stapling sheets of the newsprint together to make a poncho shape -including hood). Each poncho would get a quick spray of cheap, environmentally friendly, waterproofing agent. They could cut costs even further by using yesterday’s old newspapers -or, better still, use those dreadful free copies of ‘Metro’ that litter stations everywhere.
Naturally, the sheets of newspaper would be joined in such a way that the text could still be read by the wearer when eg sitting, dripping, on a train.
When the weather dries out, you can then ditch the cape in a bin.