To escape the winter chills and perpetual rain, sunbeds are very popular in the UK. Not only do those attending these beds get a tan, but there is the added benefit of lounging around (for a short time) in a warm place decorated with fake palm trees and badly painted murals of perfect sandy beaches. (the skin cancer comes later)
Not every UK citizen lives in the UK. There are literally millions of UK ex pats living in every country throughout the entire world. Many of these countries are hot sunny places for most of the year. In some, the heat and cloudless skies are totally relentless, magnified by the constant presence of a baking overhead sun.
Believe it or not, many miss the experience of a dull, grey day with a watery sun barely able to penetrate the drifting drizzle. Where I live this is often referred to as “a grand soft day”.
A Grey Damp Day In Scunthorpe can satisfy this longing for a short time spent with the rain on your face; your feet soaked through as your shoes “let in”, and the pages of the notebook you forgot was in your back pocket washed of all its details. (personal experience)
Visitors to one of the shared rooms or private booths at A Grey Damp Day In Scunthorpe will find a choice of inclement weather experiences they can fine tune to suit their individual needs. Included in the experience is the “stormy gusts” room, where even a sturdy umbrella will be blown inside-out, and a passing car will drench the participants with mucky water from a roadside flood as they wait at a pretend bus stop. Then there is the gentle but persistent drizzle cubicle that freezes you to the core in the murky grey mist.
Familiar words and phrases may be revived amongst the other attendees about the weather, that bastion of all conversation starters in the UK. I simply cannot imagine anyone in California remarking on the dreadful shade of blue that characterises the perfect skies day after day.
On emerging, blinking in the sun, visitors can then enjoy watching the water evaporating from their clothes as they set forth, their cravings for experiencing A Grey Damp Day In Scunthorpe satisfied until the next visit.
Note also other booths under development include:Time Spent With Swarms Of Gnats In The Fetid Mangrove;Squashed Like A Sardine In A Noisy Subway Car That Stinks Of B.O. And The Air Conditioning Isn't Working-- xenzag, Mar 26 2024 The Scunthorpe Problem https://en.wikipedi.../Scunthorpe_problemI'm not sure how you simulate this part of the experience. [pertinax, Mar 27 2024] Vitamin D and Seasonal Affective Disorder Symptoms https://www.psychol...e-disorder-symptomsResearchers found that vitamin D supplementation had an insignificant effect on both primary and secondary outcomes. [Voice, Mar 28 2024] If somebody questions the leaders of the hive mind https://www.youtube...watch?v=wTP_SdjD5ms [doctorremulac3, Mar 28 2024] Envision if you will an actual Dementia Village (eg: Hogeweyk, Village Langley) complete with cafe, auto shop, library, clothier, barber shop, tanning booth, AND now featuring [xenzag]'s Gray Damp Day area, Sardine Subway Squash, and (probably unintentionally) Unworking AirCon and GnatSWAT... oh, but to have more than one bun to give!-- Sgt Teacup, Mar 26 2024 This drizzle is for shizzle.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Mar 27 2024 I like rain. [+]-- Voice, Mar 27 2024 I'm imagining a dial on the wall, like a thermostat, with markings on it labelled "Dreich", "Smirr", "Scotch mist", "Drizzle", "Mizzle", "Spitting", "Clarty", "Plothering", "Cats & Dogs", "Stair rods"-- hippo, Mar 27 2024 This nostalgia can be carried too far.-- minoradjustments, Mar 27 2024 Ha! While grey, overcast days with 200% humidity aren't the best possible, they're infinitely preferable to:
1. The 25th day in a row of unbroken 30+°C & 80+% humidity where the grass has given up for the year, the cockroaches are on the 3rd generation of a population explosion and the marinating trash has started to generate some really complex scent notes.
2. The first day after the snow melts, and then re-frezes overnight to a perfect sheet of 0-friction ice
3. A day when a cold front moves in, so you walked to work in a t-shirt and leave work to find it's 25°C colder and you might loose the periphery of your ears to frostbite.
4. A day that starts off a lovely -30°C that makes the ice non-slippy and you coat is coping with well, then drops to -40°C where frostbite of the windpipe is a risk.
British weather is much maligned, but it rarely actively tries to kill you*. The Ex-Soviets that ran the lab I did my PhD in thought the weather was amazing.
*Except at altitude, wildly variable weather and a few hundred metres of altitude can turn nasty quickly.-- bs0u0155, Mar 27 2024 // The first day after the snow melts, and then re-frezes overnight to a perfect sheet of 0-friction ice//
I must disagree with this one.There were few days I loved more than those growing up.My brother and I could skate the entire town like a gigantic hockey rink video game.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Mar 27 2024 //it rarely actively tries to kill you//
By acting through Seasonal Affective Disorder, it maintains plausibly deniability.-- pertinax, Mar 28 2024 I used to be depressed way, way more than I am now and the difference is taking more vitamin D than recommended. I wonder whether that would help people suffering from SAD. Edit: no, no it wouldn't. At least for people who are already taking enough.-- Voice, Mar 28 2024 You'll have people catching colds in here... might spell legal trouble. Hmmmm...-- 21 Quest, Mar 28 2024 I don't know what kind of dirt-encrusted itinerants prefer rain, although snow is lovely enough to consider a transfer to Sweden, where not even the women are dirty.
High Vitamin D doses can be toxic and may lead to fogged thinking and Trump voting.-- 4and20, Mar 28 2024 Ahh the Trump cult. Never gets boring.
This personality obsession is designed to keep the people from talking about actual issues. It's brainfarming, and boy oh boy does it work.
Run up the debt to enslave the people, never ending wars and racial division to increase the power to the oligarchy 1%, and if they start to ask questions, throw them the one thing they're allowed to talk about: Trump.
Know your place proles, don't talk about how or why, only who. Leave the actual running of things to your overlords and masters. And if somebody should question our unfettered grip on power? (link)-- doctorremulac3, Mar 28 2024 I'll bun the idea though. [+]
Bun reversed after the thousandth insult to my country. [-]-- doctorremulac3, Mar 28 2024 The litany of world problems (and I'll be happy to quadruple that list, throwing Biden and hive-minds into the mix) will never change the fact that Trump, yes, Trump, yes, I really mean Trump is a dick tator, yellow on the inside, orange on the outside, covered in dirt and mounting a lot of immasculated plastic potato heads. You can't attack the nation's capitol without being a permanently vile piece of shit.-- 4and20, Mar 28 2024 I'd prefer if my idea wasn't contaminated with any references to the combined idiocy that constitutes America's stagnant backwater politics.-- xenzag, Mar 28 2024 See - it didn't take long for the well to be poisoned, but at least I know exactly who did the poisoning now with 100% certainty. If anyone else adds any references to the toxic Ultra Moron then I'm going to delete them along with all the previous ones. Keep him to fuck out of my postings!!!-- xenzag, Mar 28 2024 None of those buns or bones are mine. I cherish Scunthorpe too much.-- 4and20, Mar 28 2024 Don’t worry. I know exactly to whom they belong.-- xenzag, Mar 28 2024 I've got sun 320 days a year and I bunned the bitch. There's no accounting for taste. Drizzle on.-- minoradjustments, Mar 28 2024 Sounds tempting and I'm in Yorkshire! The only difference is that in Yorkshire the (rain) water's softer, so you could apply shampoo to good effect before your outdoors excursion.
You forgot to include the Happy Hour Special - lasts for 5 hours, all the flavoured industrial-alcohol-based shots you can handle and a free ride in a realistic police vehicle back to your accommodation. Bargain!-- yorkshirebarm, Apr 13 2024 random, halfbakery