Commuting today was a hellish experience. Not because the torrential rain caused my not-quite-leather boots to change colour, my sodden trousers to stick to my legs, and my morning train to chug into view some 18 minutes later than specified. All of that I could handle (heck, it’s pretty much guaranteed when you’re commuting into the city from the sticks).

What I couldn’t wrap my head around, though, was the fact that – when I stepped out of the station at London – I was immediately funneled into a human traffic jam. Nobody could move, everyone was (in the time-tested manner of Brits everywhere) tutting and rolling their eyes extravagantly. And so, for seven achingly slow minutes, I became part of a moving mass of damp-smelling human bodies as we inched our way to freedom.

Worse still? Freedom was tauntingly close – about three coffee-shop awnings away, in fact. I could see it. I could see people walking at actual human speed, without a care in the world, and I just couldn’t get there.

Why? Because every single person around me was clutching an obnoxiously outsized golfing umbrella, of course.

“Golf umbrellas are for golf courses, not the bloody London Underground”