This morning is another gorgeously sunny day, letting us enjoy another spell of Indian summer, but yesterday was largely dull, cool and wet. That is a reminder that, although summer is still holding out for now, we are heading towards lower temperatures, more rain and thus more days when an umbrella is required.

I have noticed two advances in umbrella technology this week:

• Built in projector so you can watch a stream of pictures on the underside of the umbrella. It even has a camera so you can upload your own images to online collections like Flickr! This one is only a prototype.
• Water resistance, using nano-technology to mimic the surface of a lotus leaf. The NanoNuno is not a sci-fi dream but available to buy for about