Rainy reverie

Rain, rain, and more rain. I think it's been raining some each day for at least two weeks. I got out running on Monday when it was clear for about 30 minutes but it started raining again on my way back. That was a miserable day actually, as the wind was gusting and it was pretty chilly. Tuesday the weather was teasing - it would start to clear up and I would start getting dressed to go outside and it would be raining again before I finished, sometime with the sun still shining. I did see the most intense rainbow I have ever experienced and it seemed very close as well. Here's a photo that doesn't do it justice:

Rain is so advanced in Scotland that it can rain without clouds being present. Honest. Sometime last week there was a shower, a pretty good one too, and the sun was shining with no clouds overhead. The only cloud that I could spot was some little white whisp off in the distance.

Whilst standing in line at the bank on Monday, a customer ahead of me started speaking to the teller in an American accent, mid-West I think. The sound of it jarred me out of my standing-in-a-long-line-at-the-bank-soaking-wet reverie. I've become accustomed to every one around me speaking in Scottish accents, or other UK and Commonwealth accents that still sound closer to a Scottish accent than an American one. So the flat sound of an American accent seemed really out of place. (Oddly enough, I can watch movies with that accent and it doesn't seem out of place, but I guess it must be similar for Scottish folk watching those movies as well.) I then realized that out-of-place is how I sound to everyone else when I'm going about my business in town or at work. For all I know, every time I speak in a bank or a grocery store or whatever, I'm jarring people out of their reveries with my Canadian vowels. I seem "normal" to them until I open my mouth and speak. Actually, come to think of it, that's probably true in Canada as well ;)

The word "wean" is used for kids over here, pronounced something like "wain". It is so common a word that in a bookstore in Dunoon I saw a shelf in the cooking section labelled "wean food". It seemed to me like "weans" are some sort of other species that have a special diet.

Something I find interesting: I've been told that it's hard to measure the true depth of lochs because they are so dark, owing to little sunlight because of northerness and mountains surrounding them blocking out the light. However, you can get a general idea of the depth of a loch by looking at the height of the surrounding mountains. The loch is about as deep as the mountains are high. So here's a picture of the mountain beside Loch Eck for your consideration (taken from part-way up the mountain on the other side - on a sunny day nonetheless!).

That's some deep water.