{"id":5301,"date":"2011-04-07T11:11:24","date_gmt":"2011-04-07T10:11:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=5301"},"modified":"2011-04-07T11:11:24","modified_gmt":"2011-04-07T10:11:24","slug":"rocks-will-melt-in-the-sun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=5301","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Rocks will melt in the sun &#8230;&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was talking to a Scottish colleague this week and she quoted the leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party Alex Salmond as insisting that &#8220;rocks will melt in the sun&#8221; before he introduces university tuition fees for Scottish students.<\/p>\n<p>I had not heard this phraseology before and clearly it is so colourful that it did not originate with a politician. When I inquired, I was advised that it comes from a poem by Robert Burns.<\/p>\n<p>Checking this out later, I find that the poem is &#8220;A Red, Red Rose&#8221; and you can read the full text <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/A_Red,_Red_Rose\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I suppose that the most common equivalent phrase to the assertion that &#8220;rocks will melt in the sun&#8221; before something unexpected happens would be &#8220;Hell will freeze over&#8221; before something occurs. Can you think of similar expressions?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was talking to a Scottish colleague this week and she quoted the leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party Alex Salmond as insisting that &#8220;rocks will melt in the sun&#8221; before he introduces university tuition fees for Scottish students. I had not heard this phraseology before and clearly it is so colourful that it did [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5301"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5304,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5301\/revisions\/5304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}