The Small Rain, Low-Lands : A Few Questions

[Paul Mackin]

On Sat, 15 Jan 2000, rj wrote:

> sk/pm
> > >
> > > There are the "bank run" in the dump ("On the top of the pinnacle of bank
> > > run stood  a human figure..."). What does it mean? Only "bank run" I found
> > > is financial term...
> > 
> > "Bank run" is the gravel that's left after the dirt has been
> > washed away by naturally flowing water. Also called bank gravel. Found
> > around banks of streams.
> 
> Maybe Mr P has misused the phrase then because this dump's "roughly
> square, half a mile on each side, sunk fifty feet below the streets of
> the sprawling housing development which surrounded it."(*SL*64) And a
> couple of pages later the caretaker, Bolingbroke, leads Dennis and Pig
> up out of the spiral again to get a mattress each: "up a slope, around a
> tall tower of bank run" and then on past all the refrigerators,
> bicycles, washing machines &c. I've got a picture of it in my head, but
> it's much taller than a riverbank would be ("tower", "pinnacle"); just a
> high shelf of debris.

Well, perhaps there is water running through it--almost certainly so
if it much below ground level. Water running through earthy material is
the natural way for gravel and sand to be formed. Or perhaps the gravel
was hauled in from somewhere else and dumped. It could still be called
bank run regardless of how it got there. 

		P.