Reading someone else's blog made me think how i feel about having to admit that I need a stick.
I carried a rolled up umbrella all sumer rather than admit I needed a stick, I live on the sunshine coast of essex where it never rains,  so I did get a few remarkes about it. (exspecting rain ? here comes mary poppins ect) but I let it go over my head. I was adamant that I was too young for a stick.
Then I remember'd grandads walking stick,or is it great grandads. My dad always refererd to it as grandads walking stick so perhaps it was his grandads. Three years ago when my dad died I found it verry hard as I supose most people do, but one of the few things I could bring myself to keep was grandads stick. It had been in dads shed all my life and i am aproaching 60, I took it home and put it in my shed assuming that is where it would stay untill one of my kids took it and put it in her shed.
  This is no ordenary stick it is a thin, I think rosewood cane with a silver band on whitch is embosed a shotgun and a brace of phesants toped with a carving in bone or ivory of a dogs head snarling.(I will try to upload a picture to my media)
Since I have been using the stick I quite often get the feeling I dont actualy need it now,but i never leave the house without it, even just walking to the car parked on the drive I take the stick.
It has become like a third legg even though I have two perfectly good ones. It does not make me feel old like the rolled up umbrela did it makes me feel,,,I think the word that sums it up is dapper and I walk twice as far and fast with the stick. Its all a bit confusing, hey ho