Boxes of Rain

Around this time of year my thoughts often drift back to an occasion in summer 2010, the memorial of an old friend who died far too young. John always comes to mind, even now, whenever a person is described as a "larger than life" character: it's hard to believe that someone so supercharged is no longer with us. Although, a decade-point-three on, it's an idea that no longer seems quite so unreasonable as it did back then, and I sense a rising nervousness among my contemporaries: who's next?

One of the permanent memories of that afternoon is, surprisingly, the Grateful Dead song "A Box of Rain", which was played at the end of the proceedings. Now, I am definitively not a "deadhead" – in the past, I was known to protest vociferously whenever a Dead album found its way onto a turntable – but hearing that particular track under those circumstances was an unexpectedly overwhelming experience. Thank goodness I need never listen to it ever again...

Anyway, the idea of "a box of rain" stuck with me, and eventually came to seem a natural fit with the half-abandoned "deconstructed packaging" idea. I liked the idea of a cube, inside which rain of various intensities was falling, a sort of temperate-climate relative of the "snow globe". So here are four variations on the theme.

As printed, these are A3 sheets. Assuming you can't read them reproduced at this size, the two texts are:

All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again. (Ecclesiastes 1:7)

Vapour brought to us by such a wind must have been generated in countries lying to the South and East of our island. It is therefore probably in the extensive vallies watered by the Meuse, the Moselle, and the Rhine, if not from the more distant Elbe, with the Oder and Weser that the water rises, in the midst of sunshine, which is soon afterwards to form our clouds, and pour down in our Thunder-showers. And this island, in all probability,  does the same office for Ireland: nay, the Eastern for the Western counties of South Britain.  (Luke Howard, The Climate of London, 1818-20)

Plus, of course, there are the essential assembly instructions:

1. Cut out the box template

2. Score along the [colour] lines

3. Fold along the scored lines

4. Apply glue to the tabs

5. Assemble into a cubical box

6. Or, why not just leave it as it is?

You'll be completely familiar with Ecclesiastes, of course, but Luke Howard's three tomes of meteorological data and observations may be less well-known. They are available online, however, and well worth a browse if you're a fan of observational, anecdotal science in the mode of Gilbert White. Here's something that caught my eye, for example, if only because in 1800 my maternal ancestors were living in Ampthill, Beds.:

Remarkable Hail Storm in Bedfordshire, 19th of Eighth mo. 1800

The following particulars of a destructive hail storm in Bedfordshire were communicated to me by my friend and relation, Richard Howe, of Aspley, who showed me the scars then remaining in the stems of fir trees in his plantation, from wounds inflicted by this hail several years before.

    There had been thunder showers early in the morning, after which the air cleared up and became very warm. About 7 p.m. after a very heavy clap of thunder and vivid lightning, the hail began, and fell for about ten minutes only; it consisted of balls of ice, of from six to eight or nine inches in circumference. A small one weighed above two ounces; the form was an oblate spheroid, the nucleus the more transparent part. The cloud had an uncommon, fiery appearance, and there was lightning all the evening after. The next evening, also, much thunder, with heavy continued rain. On the third day, the air much clearer and fine; afterwards showery.

    The storm appeared to originate about Fenny Stratford, and passed in a westerly [1] direction over Hogstye-End, Aspley, Crawley, (missing Woburn,) to Ridgemount, Ampthill, and Clophill, where it ceased, having gone fourteen or fifteen miles, with a breadth of, at most, a mile and a half.

    The repairs of glass, &c. in this space amounted to several thousand pounds. The corn in shocks, as well as that standing, was in many fields quite thrashed out of the straw.

Curiously, a family legend was that my mother, who had been an ATS sergeant in an ack-ack battery during the war and thus well acquainted with loud bangs, was nonetheless unreasonably afraid of thunder, as was my grandmother. Might some ancestral flinch have been passed down through the generations as a result of that notably destructive and prolonged storm? Probably not – it's no more likely than that my descendants several generations from now will have inherited a reflex distaste for flaccid West Coast guitar noodling – even though I believe Lamarckian evolution has regained some respectability as a theory. But it's nice to come across something that your long-dead, unknowable, direct forebears must have experienced as a remarkable event. It was bound to have been the talk of the village for years ("Hail, boy? That ent hail... Lemme tell you abewt that ol' storm we hed in 1800...").

1. Interesting use of "westerly" there, as all of these places lie further to the east, not west of Fenny Stratford. It seems in the early 1800s "westerly" meant "coming from the west", as still applied to a westerly wind, as well as "heading west". Confusing... It is a curious fact, though, and one often unremarked, that the arrow on a weathercock points to where the wind is blowing from, not in the direction in which it is blowing. Obvious really, but similarly confusing.