Cumbria hit by storms and floods

Sometimes life is beyond irony.

This afternoon after a morning and mid-day spent in rabbit rescue, giving lifts to family members to save them getting drenched while walking to and from the shops, and in various household tasks, I threw on some smarter clothes and dashed down to a local hall in Duke Street for a meeting.

With the collar, tie and suit I had put on, I had donned a collarette medallion bearing the image of Noah's Ark, which represents my membership status in a society called the Royal Ark Mariners, which commemorates the great flood. When I arrived in Duke Street the meeting had been cancelled because of the dreadful weather - including severe floods in many parts of Cumbria such as Keswick and Appleby.

As I say, life is sometimes beyond irony.

If you are planning to travel anywhere in Cumbria today or tomorrow, you will probably be aware of severe weather in many parts of the county with lots of road closures due to high wind accidents and floods. Do take great care if you have to do this.

Comments

Jim said…
Royal Ark Mariners, which commemorates the great flood.

Which great flood? please, please, do not tell me you are of the opinion that the global flood described in Genesis is a historical event.

I am kind of hoping you mean this is some sort of symbolic idea which stands for the idea of people standing and working together in a crisis.
Chris Whiteside said…
It's basically as you are hoping, Jim

The Honourable Fraternity of Royal Ark Mariners is a masonic order which uses the story of the Flood to celebrate moral lessons about people helping each other through dangers, difficulties and even disasters.

I do think that the biblical account of the Great Flood may be a dimly remembered account of a real ancient event in which people worked together to survive a major flooding event at the dawn of recorded history. There is some geological evidence that there was at least one such event in the Middle East some six thousand or more years ago.

However, that does not mean that I presume every word of the biblical account of the Great Flood to be the literal revealed truth. The idea of the entire surface of the world being covered in water like something out of the film 2012 (it isn't just religious textbooks that contain "interesting" ideas) has never struck me as particularly plausible.
Chris Whiteside said…
But as I have just posted to a friend who asked me a similar question on Facebook, the idea of a single vessel preserving every living species of air-breathing creature and resurrecting the entire ecology by preserving two of each species is an engineering, logistical, ecological and genetic impossibility.
Jim said…
Great, glad you cleared that one up, thanks

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