Get over the rainbow

'And the moral of the story? Never argue with God about the nature of rainbows. For He is armed with thunderbolts, and He fights dirty'

Today, I am bringing you three stories for our times.

First story

Once upon a time there was a man in a car in the country who drove out of rain into sunshine and saw a great big rainbow arching across the sky, so complete and so beautiful that he stopped the car to get out and look at it.

"What causes a rainbow, Daddy?" said a voice.

He had forgotten that his little daughter Catriona was sitting in the car with him.

"Well, darling," he said, "the way it works is this..."

For a moment, he couldn't remember. Lots of fragments of education came back to him. Prisms... the spectrum... something to do with the Old Testament and God giving it to the Israelites as a sign...

"I'll tell you when we get home," he said.

When they got home, and his daughter was telling her mother about the lovely rainbow they'd seen, the father was looking up in his reference books for an explanation of rainbows, but he couldn't find anything about them.

So the next day he slipped out to the library and started reading about physics, and the nature of light, and the meteorological conditions necessary for rainbows, and the refractive powers of water, and the time it takes a sunbeam to get from the Sun, and the more he learnt, the more it seemed necessary to learn even more to explain things properly.

Finally he felt he had got it all taped, and sat Catriona down one day to explain things to her.

"You remember that rainbow we saw the other day?" he said.

"I'm not interested in silly old rainbows any more," she said, and ran away to play with her friends.

Moral: Don't try and learn everything. Leave that to Melvyn Bragg.

Second story

Once upon a time, in the days of the Old Testament, the children of Israel were in the desert, and lo, the Lord God put a rainbow in the heavens. And the children of Israel had never seen a rainbow before and were sore afraid.

But the Lord said unto them: "Fear not – it is a rainbow, which I have put in the sky as a symbol of my love for you, and so that ye shall know I am your God."

And they all bowed down, and made that noise which means, Gosh, We are very impressed, Thank you. All, that is, except one Israelite, more daring than the rest, who said to God: "How can this be? Do you mean we are the only people who will see this rainbow?"

"No," said God. "It will be seen by all the other peoples in the world, but only you, my chosen ones, will know it is a sign from God."

"And what will all the other peoples in the world think of it?"

And God replied: "They will be sore afraid."

"Not for long," said the daring Israelite. "Soon they will get used to it. Then either they will come to think of it as a sign from their god, or, more likely, they will develop a theory to explain it, such as that it is the refraction of light through water vapour. They will then become scientific and inquiring, whereas you are condemning us to accepting superstitious and symbolic stories as an explanation, and being incurious. That is no way to treat a chosen people."

Then God was wroth and hurled a thunderbolt and slew him, and all the people made the noise which means, Phew, I am glad it wasn't me said that.

Moral: Never argue with God. He fights dirty.

Third story

Once upon a time, in the year 2004, there was an artist who devised a very ingenious entry for the Turner Prize. It was set in his own room, a big room, with a huge plate-glass window at one end, and the window looked out across a dreary stretch of London, and there was a big label on the window saying "RAINBOW".

"Why do you call it 'Rainbow'?" they asked him.

"Because when you look out of the window you will see a rainbow."

"But we do not see a rainbow."

"Not right now, not all the time, not most of the time. But sooner or later you will look out of this window and see a rainbow. And then the title of the piece will be true. Isn't that what art is all about? About how difficult the communication between artist and public is, and how rarely the true moment of epiphany takes place?"

"That is very true and very wonderful," said a man called Serota, who happened to be passing by.

And on the strength of this endorsement the artist sold the installation to a man called Saatchi for £300,000 and was able to move to somewhere much nicer.

Moral: Just because there is a crock of gold at the end of the rainbow, doesn't mean there is a rainbow.