Only two answers to the quiz?????????? one was right good old JT the answer I posted to Mick before I posted it with a few comments follows, but at least the clicks are getting up.
So here it is, They all appear in Thomas Gray's poem 'Elegy written in a country churchyard'.
Four well known phrases, in common use, from one not-very-long poem, seems to me to be quite remarkable. I say 'four' as I'm not sure that 'The peep of dawn' is too well known, though it strikes me as being familiar. Nor do I know if Gray was the first to link 'peep' with 'dawn' though, again, I suspect that he was. Thomas Hood also linked 'peep' with 'dawn' in his poem 'I remember, I remember, the house where I was born; the little window where the sun came peeping in at dawn' etc. etc.
Wet Wet Wet not the Scottish pop rock band that formed in the 1980s but it has been . A while ago, you may remember, I reported that we had been issued with a hosepipe ban. Water levels for that month were lower than in the height of the long hot summer of 1976 a few of you remember who where stationed in Coypool in that year; and, despite a lot of water companies not attending to wasteful leaks (yes, you lot on the south west) no washing of you car Tom don't think you did, it was decreed that the use of the common garden hose was verboten. No more Pleasant Valley Sunday car washing or sprinkling of the lawn; no more window cleaning with the K-Telomatic long-reach-window-pole-and-hose-combination and definitely no more filling up your paddling pools by hose. A miserable hose-less summer seemed to be on the cards. The kids dancing in and out of the sprinkler to shouts of laughter was not to be… That was until April.
Now, when I was a wee chap in the grey short school trousers there was a nursery rhyme or saying that spoke of March winds and April showers. The key words here, I feel, are ‘April showers’ – no where does it speak of April deluges or April heavy-unrelenting-downpours. But April deluges and downpours, of what can only be described as Noahian proportions, was what we got. Lulu II managed well she rose out of the water and it was a bit tricky going through Nottingham. I spent the whole month under my brolly and my entire collection of shoes (which, it must be said, is not on the Imelda scale) all now leak.
It has been officially reported that the rain unleashed on the United Kingdom in April broke all previous records. The Met Office said six of its weather stations had seen more than three times their usual monthly average this April: “The figures up to April 29 show the amount of rain which has fallen is almost double the long term average for April of 69.6mm, in records dating back to 1910.” Liscombe, on Exmoor in Somerset, has seen the most rainfall, with 273.8mm of rain compared with its 86.4mm average. Crumbs, that’s a lotta rain! I wonder how much of it the water companies let leak away.
But hey, if that news doesn’t cheer us up here is some that will; the reservoirs are nearly full again. So much so, that as of this week, guess what? Yup, the hosepipe ban has been lifted. Well, it has here in the Midlands and for much of the country. I think it’s still in place in the South West (were the companies don’t bung up the leaks) and across parts of the South east. But for the rest of us it’s, “Hi, di, hi” and down to B&Q to buy up all those cheap hoses and sprinkley-snap-on gadgets. Mind you, a kill-joy from Defra (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) has been quick to, erm,put the spoke in. He lectured on Channel 4 News that's if you watch it: “While we welcome the rain we have received recently, we cannot be complacent and still need everyone to save water where they can.” Well mate, I’ve got three pairs of wellies outside my back door that are absolutely full of water - you can have that if you want it!
So TITS till next time, book your booze cruise for an exhilarating time .
Toodle pip Magic
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