This is allegedly summer-time here, however you’d never have guessed it by our recent weather! Yes, it’s been reasonably mild, but it’s being very wet at times with very few sunny intervals. Not great summer weather at all!
Having said that, it has meant I’ve seen some of my favourite things, rainbows! I don’t know what it is about rainbows but they always bring a smile to my face – maybe it’s the colours, maybe it’s the knowledge that there’s some sunshine around…maybe it’s it possibility of finding a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow!
This got me thinking about the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, because I realised I didn’t actually know where this story had come from. So I did a bit of digging around and found that an Irish leprechaun‘s secret hiding place for his pot of gold is usually said to be at the end of the rainbow. This is a place which is impossible to reach, because the rainbow is an optical effect which depends on the location of the viewer. i.e. When walking towards the end of a rainbow, it will appear to “move” further away, so two people who simultaneously observe a rainbow at different locations will disagree about where a rainbow is.
That explains why I’ve never found a pot of gold at the end of any rainbow I’ve ever seen. Oh well I’ll just need to keep looking elsewhere for my fortune!
