The Queen & Umbrellas

Rihanna: You can stand under her umbrolla >

Not much time for fact-finding today, seems like everyone's woken up from Christmas hibernation and I suddenly have a lot of work to do and a lot of bills coming through our tiny letterbox (why can't they make bills the same size as Amazon packages? I'd gladly wait for a bill to be redelivered). Anyway I was curious as to why umbrellas are called brollies for short, instead of brellies, so I thought I'd look that up quickly (pre-meditated learning is, of course, within the rules) and found that someone had asked the very same question on Yahoo! Answers, and had had 6 replies. I felt the giddy rush of an impending answer to my conundrum, but was left disappointed by the responses, most of which were 'it's an abbreviation of umbrella', a response so glib it makes me want to track down the poster and set about them with a cricket bat, upon which would be the question written in highlighter pen. Maybe NOW you'll read it properly. Anyway, moving on; as my brolly question remains unsolved, I'll go with this startling piece of information, courtesy of London Lite, the free evening paper with 'ink that WON'T come off on your hands' and news that WON'T come off on your brain. The story was about female guards at St. James' Palace. I wondered why on Earth the gender of palace guards should be remotely newsworthy until I read the following:

The first female guards at Windsor Castle patrolled the gates only last year.

Wow, sexism and the monarchy - my two favourite embarrassing, outdated institutions, together at last! Apparently they've been drafted in because all the chaps are off fighting illegal wars, so don't panic, it's not like they're being put on an equal footing based on ability, heaven forfend. Let's just hope they're not too busy thinking about kittens and baking to let their guard down. And I know London Lite isn't exactly a broadsheet, but the article doesn't question why women haven't been allowed to guard the stupid monarchy's stupid palaces, or why the Sexual Discrimination Act doesn't seem to apply to them. It's more 'look, girls in uniforms' which is pretty disgraceful.

God it's really getting to me. Why are they called brollies?