A case of red sky at night, sailor's delight
As a communications consultant I guess it should come as no surprise that I have a penchant for idioms. As my colleagues will testify, weather related ones are widely used in my daily vocabulary. For example, it's raining cats and dogs for heavy rain, nice weather for ducks for wet days, brass monkeys for when it's cold and my favourite of all time is a monkey's wedding which is a South African idiom that describes a sunshower - a weather event when rain falls while the sun is still shining. This is often the case in sub-tropical Hong Kong! Having been raised in Wales, it's no surprise that rain related ones are on the top of my idiom list.
My interest in idioms and weather-related ones arose predominantly from my BBC news reading days. A very good friend, Helen Willetts, a meteorologist on the BBC World News shared much information with me about the weather as we shared a studio together in the 1990's. Our friendship developed during my news reading days and her BBC Wales weather days and we become bosom buddies. When I was planning my wedding in West Wales, I asked Helen if she'd be so kind as to do one of the readings at our wedding service, which she was delighted about.
There was however more than usual concern about the weather on July 31, 2014, due to the logistical set up of the wedding. Despite living in Hong Kong at the time, my husband and I decided we wanted to marry in 'God's Country,' Wales. This was somewhat challenging in terms of arranging logistics from halfway across the world as the service itself was in a 14th Century whitewashed Church perched on a cliff top above Mwnt beach, in Cardiganshire. With no hotel within a 15-mile radius to facilitate a wedding breakfast, we decided to ask the farmer who owned the land adjoining the church if we could pitch a marquee on his field and feed and entertain the 150 guests who were flying into Wales from far and wide. Guests were about to descend on stunning Mwnt from Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore, Sydney and for many this was their first experience of Wales.
The wedding week started off badly! Gail force winds and lashing rain. How would my international guests cope in rural west Wales in their stilettos, DJ's and fancy hats traipsing through fields? More importantly, how was I going to enter the site of the wedding in an open horse drawn cart with my wee flower girls and bridesmaids without being soaking wet and looking like a dog's dinner for my own wedding.
I was in a panic and there was only one person who could come to my assistance: Helen Willetts. Despite me harassing her daily for weather updates for about a week she constantly reassured me that the sun would be shining brightly on July 31. I of course thought that the Asian gods wanted me to be happy and that rain would bring good fortune and luck. Helen in her metrological wisdom was of course correct. The day proved to be beautiful. Dolphins were jumping in the sea below us, my Asian guests thought they landed in what must have been heaven and a few bald elderly uncles had rather burnt heads.
Having a weather forecaster friend is something I value enormously. Not only did Helen read beautifully in the service - she predicted the weather for July 31 perfectly. It was a case of "red sky at night, sailor's delight."
