"Clive D. W. Feather" wrote in message
news
In article , Ian Jelf
writes
Surprised at being asked, I was staggered when they said that their
grounds for suspicion was that I was carrying.......an umbrella!

With hindsight, I suppose it did look a bit odd in yesterday's lovely
sunny weather

Some years ago I was at a technical conference in London. The
conference itself was at Lancaster Gate but the evening social was at
Tower Bridge (on the gantries). One of the (sponsored) free gifts was
an umbrella.
So one July, on a scorching hot day, you got to see 500 geeks carrying
umbrellas as they rode the Underground from Lancaster Gate to Tower
Bridge.

Even better, almost 20 years ago I was at a large international sales
conference in Jamaica. We were all given a world-time clock as a gift.
I don't think anyone confessed to security that we were all carrying an
electronic black box timer device. Nobody had any problems with
security, and, of course, no planes got blown-up.