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NOVEL WAYS TO AVOID THE RAIN
These ex-pats can be cunning. After eight weeks of record rains, and the broadcast forecast of further monumental torrential rains we decided to go sub-terranian. We went pot-holing, not a pursuit for the faint hearted. Clad in climbing gear and furnished with a senior citizens discounted ticket we descended into the cavernous under-world of the Blue John mine in Derbyshire. (What John has got to do with it remains a mystery). Led by a no-nonsense, abrupt Mancunian we descended through a labyrinth of tunnels and caverns to see the seam of Blue John mineral which is still mined, and is unique to the area. Who were we to question the claim, we had to get back to the surface and to feel the warmth of the overcast clouds on our face again. The reward for risking life and limb was lunch at the Cheshire Cheese at Castleton and tea at the Cat and Fiddle, a lone pub on the high road between Buxton and Macclesfield.Flushed with yesterday's success, we decided to avoid the rain again and visit Manchester. Kerry explained that the Manchester Selfridges has the lowest recorded rainfall in the North of England and is worth every mega-penny. An all-day, all-vehicle seniors ticket saw us transported by Virgin bullet train into Piccadilly Station Manchester, and within minutes, into the sunshine of Harvey Nicks and Selfridges. Armani, failed to work his magic even with the sales in full swing, but Max Mara spoiled a clear round in Selfridges despite a couple of refusals. Note the garish bag in the photograph. The big wheel really was photographed in sunshine, but umbrellas were not far away.
4 comments:
Now some help please for us poor unedgeykated antipodeans. What on earth is the "warmth of the overcast clouds" referring to? Surely this cannot be the extent of summer which, from your reports, we thought was last Tuesday.
How on earth do they play cricket in that weather? Oh that's right, sorry.
Anyway, keep up the good work & congrats to John for his role in making a hole in the ground famous and "photo-worthy"!
Yesterday was another hot sunny day in York. However, I hear you have had a lot of rain in Macclesfield as you did in Harrogate and Glaisdale. It suddenly hit me as I was watering the garden this afternoon, that you obviously have your own cumulonimbus cloud which is following you 'round the country. It's a shame we wont see you at Whitby, but weatherwise I think it is for the best!!
Regards the Blue John Cavern, I would like to inform your (I quote) "unedgeykated antipodean" friends that I'm rather famous over here!
John
J I think you are famous everywhere. I'd like to be an antipodean, but not knowing what one is, I wouldn't know how to behave
Unfortunately antipodean is not a complimentary phrase the poms use for us; Pick either of these;
1. The term is taken up by Aristotle (De caelo 308a.20), Strabo, Plutarch and Diogenes Laertius, and was adopted into Latin as antipodes. The Latin word changed its sense from the original "under the feet, opposite side" to "those with the feet opposite", i.e. a bahuvrihi referring to hypothetical people living on the opposite side of the Earth. Medieval illustrations imagine them in some way "inverted", with their feet growing out of their heads, pointing upward.
Not a pretty picture ! Or this which is even worse;
2. The antipodes being an attribute of a spherical Earth, some authors used their perceived absurdity as an argument for a flat Earth. However, knowledge of the spherical Earth being widespread even during the Dark Ages, only occasionally disputed on theological grounds, the medieval dispute surrounding the antipodes mainly concerned the question whether they were inhabitable: since the torrid clime was considered impassable, it would have been impossible to evangelize them, posing a dilemma between two equally unacceptable possibilities that either Christ had appeared a second time in the antipodes, or that the inhabitants of the antipodes were irredeemably damned.
Well, looks like we're all going to hell. Perhaps when you get there you could get some reprieve given you are related to the famous John (sausage) Rolls ?
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