We're Irish, but we don't know what to do when it rains!
Raining heavily this morning, and every schoolkid I saw going to school, and 90% of all the other pedestrians, had no umbrella or raincoat, and were simply standing there getting wet. Unbelieveable. This happens all the time in Limerick. Why? Perhaps raincoats and umbrellas are "un-cool" ? Well, I think looking like a drowned rat is un-cool too! What is most unfathomable is how we as a nation seem so unprepared for rain in a country that has rain as a constant companion. Roads flood, people don't carry umbrellas or waterproof coats, walkways between buildings in universities are not covered (apart from UCD, in fairness)...
4 Comments:
Hey, it's like a Rain Dance! The American Indians (and shamans in other cultures) would often perform a Rain Dance to convince the Goods that it should be raining by behaving like it was. Here, In Limerick in Ireland, we're doing the opposite - try to make it stop by behaving like it isn't...
The answer can be found in the bins of Ireland after one of those bouts of windy weather which occur mainly between January and December; tragic heaps of little umbrella-corpses, their bodies horribly mutilated.
Theoretically, advances in material science might one day allow some latter-day Brunel to design an umbrella capable of withstanding at least the milder sort of Irish summer; then, it will be up to the biotechnologists to develop a pedestrian with arms capable of safely controlling a metre or two of sail on a long lever in storm force winds...
I'd say the only solution is to build a roof over Ireland. then we'll have the largest Millenium Stadium in the World. And, Munster will always win.
Interesting comments about controlling a metre or two of sail. I find my windsurfing experience helps me greatly when carrying an umbrella. My biggest umbrella has an area of less than 1m2, whereas my biggest windsurfing sail has an area of 9m2, bigger than the sail on a Laser dinghy...
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