LOL! In Manchester, I'm the only person who ever puts her headlights on when it rains because, to everyone else, that's normal visibility. (Sometimes, the rain stops and the sun comes out, and that's super-high visibility).
In some ways, Manchester is the capital of North Wales... :-D
I am intrigued to see from the results that Seattle is another place where 40 days of rain raises no eyebrows, perhaps Wales should conduct some sort of Damp Twinning festival ... :-D
So if you spent your childhood thinking a Biblical flood was commonplace and ongoing, it must have been a great disappointment never to catch sight of all those matched pairs of animals that were presumably constantly heading off towards some Ark or another.
Any society that had systems in place that would allow Noah to track down two, and just two*, of every species of animal alive, and ensure that they all arrived at the correct place at the correct time, and were adequately fed and housed in ways that meant they didn't eat each other, and only had two fleas between them, was obviously capable of serious planning. But maybe that was the problem; all their organisational energies went into animal wrangling, and none into flood readiness. They were probably too busy transporting lemurs to even get round to inventing umbrellas.
* I remembered from QI that certain animals (edible ones?) were taken onto the ark in numbers greater than 2, and went to check this fact. My entire first page of results was full of serious and earnest discussions about ark logistics by people who believe every word is true. It was all quite amusing, but entirely distracted me from my original quest.
I can't remember now if it was a children's book, or another attempt by my mother to make the story make sense (or at least get to the end of it without being ambushed by a thousand unanswerable questions), but I'm sure I was told at an early age that there were lots of arks all laden with different animals and people all setting off from different places?
I have this clear mental image of the rain stopping and all the people and animals looking out from their arks, and seeing the fleet of other arks across the water but I have no idea where it came from. :-D
There is a at least one other ark, according to children's book called, not surprisingly, The Other Ark. There were too many animals to fit into Noah's ark, so he asked his friend to take all the kangadoodledoos and hippogiraffes the like. It's all quite confusing, though. I'd assumed the ark of exotic animals would meet some hideous disaster, thus explaining why there are no kangadoodledoos today, but all that happens is that Noah's friend takes so long organising things, that the flood recedes before he finishes, leaving them all alive and well on dry land. Which kind of raises the question of why the whole ark thing was necessary in the first place.
Lady of astolat, have you ever considered looking stuff up in a book, rather than on-line? As long as you have some idea where to start looking, it can be surprisingly effective.
And yes, the edible species came in sevens. Somehow I don't think this was to avoid inbreeding.
Unfortunately there weren't any books to hand this morning, when I was reading LJ on my phone while sitting on a stone step on the sea front, waiting for the floating bridge to turn.
"It were always rainin' in Denley Moor, except on days when it were fine; and there weren't many of those - not if you include drizzle as rain. And even if it weren't drizzling, it were overcast and there were a lot of moisture in the air. You'd come home as though it had been rainin', even though there had been no evidence of precipitation in the rain gauge outside the town hall."
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2012-01-11 01:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-11 09:11 am (UTC)I am intrigued to see from the results that Seattle is another place where 40 days of rain raises no eyebrows, perhaps Wales should conduct some sort of Damp Twinning festival ... :-D
no subject
Date: 2012-01-11 12:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-11 08:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-11 09:03 am (UTC)"It rained nonstop" she said
??? I said
"Really hard! Not just drizzle!"
???
And then, with a faint air of desperation: "They weren't used to it."
This left the impression that the biblical flood was basically produced by a combination of poor planning and inadequate drainage.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-11 11:26 am (UTC)* I remembered from QI that certain animals (edible ones?) were taken onto the ark in numbers greater than 2, and went to check this fact. My entire first page of results was full of serious and earnest discussions about ark logistics by people who believe every word is true. It was all quite amusing, but entirely distracted me from my original quest.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-11 11:52 am (UTC)I have this clear mental image of the rain stopping and all the people and animals looking out from their arks, and seeing the fleet of other arks across the water but I have no idea where it came from. :-D
no subject
Date: 2012-01-11 05:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-11 02:19 pm (UTC)And yes, the edible species came in sevens. Somehow I don't think this was to avoid inbreeding.
no subject
Date: 2012-01-11 05:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-11 12:38 pm (UTC)"It were always rainin' in Denley Moor, except on days when it were fine; and there weren't many of those - not if you include drizzle as rain. And even if it weren't drizzling, it were overcast and there were a lot of moisture in the air. You'd come home as though it had been rainin', even though there had been no evidence of precipitation in the rain gauge outside the town hall."
- Eric Olthwaite