Eric (Terry David John Pratchett) читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги

14

The British proverb this refers to is “it’s like painting the Forth bridge”. The Forth bridge can be found spanning the Forth river (no kidding) between the towns of North Queensferry and South Queensferry, just outside Edinburgh, Scotland. It is so large that when they have finished painting it, it is time to start over again.

In reality, I’m told, they simply look for bits of the Forth bridge that need painting and paint them. So it is true that they keep on painting, but they do it discretely, not continuously.

(One correspondent reports that a similar story is told about Golden Gate bridge being in a perpetual state of corrosion control painting, and it would not surprise to find other very large man-made structures will have given rise to their own local versions of the proverb.)