Tag: Spring

May Day Mayhem

On By Mick CanningIn Beltane, caught by the river, Folk traditions, Jack in the Green, May day, summer, sussex33 Comments

The May Day festival, Beltane, is a survival, or revival, from the Iron Age, celebrated in Celtic communities – Scotland and Ireland particularly – and revived as a full festival in Scotland in the 1980’s by the Beltane Fire Society. Beltane was a fire festival, although nothing of that remains in the festivities carried out in England. Beltane was first mentioned by name in Irish writings from the late 800’s / early 900’s.

The English version of this festival involves cutting flowers and greenery and dancing around a maypole, which things are also carried out during Beltane, celebrating the beginning of Summer which begins on May 1st. When I was a child, dancing around the maypole was the chief, possibly only, activity carried out on May Day. I have a photograph of my brother, my cousin, and myself, dressed up for the May Day Fair at which there was maypole dancing, but no obvious indication of surplus greenery. Past generations in England celebrated May Day with a day of celebrations which while including maypole dancing as an important manifestation of encouraging the fertility of the soil (and the festival-goers!) would also have included plenty of food and drink and general gaiety.

Mayhem, if you like.

This year, I managed two May Day days out.

On Saturday, two days before May Day, I visited Kingston near Lewes, in Sussex, for the Caught by the River Mayday event. Caught by the River describe themselves as an arts/nature/culture clash and you can read all about them here. I have followed them now for several years, and this seems as good a time as any to mention that their coverage of arts, nature, and culture are second to none and if you’re not yet following them, well, you should be.

There was mask-making to begin with, especially to involve the children, the makers encouraged to incorporate flowers and greenery into their masks, and almost inevitably a certain amount of folk-horror found its way into some of these.

Nice, Richard.

This was followed by a promenade around the maypole, after which the activity moved indoors.

There were films, talks, and discussions, subjects including rivers, village life in the early eighteenth century, art, standing stones and the like, and the environment. After which, in the late afternoon, we all promenaded up the hillside to the Gurdy Stone.

This is the Gurdy Stone, a modern standing stone on a hillside overlooking Kingston. Here, Local Psycho (Jem Finer and Jimmy Cauty), held a gathering to encode the music of their Hurdy Gurdy song into the stone “To mark the 50,000 year return of the Green Comet and release of The Hurdy-Gurdy song on Heavenly Recordings.”

Throughout the day, naturally, we all had access to the pub.

And then on Monday, which was May Day, we went down to Hastings. It rather felt as though everyone in South East England must be in the town, either at the Jack in the Green festivities or watching blokes on motorbikes roaring up and down the seafront for no discernible reason. I don’t much like crowds, and some of this was very difficult. But away from the huge horsepower and testosterone nonsense, amongst the Jack in the Green celebrations the atmosphere was brilliant and the large numbers of people perfectly acceptable. Jack in the Green is a manifestation of the spirit of spring, related to the Green Man, a dancing figure covered in greenery.

The festival in Hastings has grown over the years into a large event involving musicians, dancers, Morris sides, huge figures in addition to Jack in the Green such as the Queen of the May, a witch, and others, plus any number of people joining in the procession around the town, all decorated with as much, or as little, greenery and/or flowers as they feel suitable.

There you go, a Morris side.

Followed by a large witch with a cat. Why the witch? I’ve no idea. Why not? I suppose.

And there you have it. Music. Drumming. Greenery. Crowd involvement. Summer is icumen in and winter’s gone away-o.

And there was beer again, of course.

We Went For A Walk

On By Mick CanningIn kent, poetry, Spring, UK, walking17 Comments

At last, the weather has got milder and it wasn’t raining so we thought ‘let’s go!’ Nothing outrageous, just seven or eight miles around Kent, in no hurry, looking for signs of Spring. So, have a browse through a few visual notes with me…

It looks very cloudy, but the clouds were thin and we got quite a lot of sunshine.

With birdsong thrown in for free! For some reason, WordPress won’t let me load this video directly, but is happy to load it from Twitter. *shrugs*

The celandines are out.

And a few early primroses.

We passed a magnificent oak

And some rather nice fungi on the end of this log

And, a poem. You may have read this before, as I’ve posted it before, but I’ve put up again because I rather think it just encapsulates how I feel when I go out walking.

If I could just wave a wand,

I would wander the world.

With my notebook in hand,

And a bag on my back.

.

I would sleep under hedges,

In hotels and haylofts.

Drink beers under trees,

And eat cheese on the moor.

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I’d watch clouds over hilltops,

And boats on the ocean.

Shapes and shadows at sunset,

A moon with a view.

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And I’d write trivial poems

Of snowfall and sunlight,

Birds singing at dawn

And the sounds of a stream.

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There’s the lure of a skyline,

And skylarks above me,

Wine and woodsmoke my welcome,

At the end of the day.

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To travel, to journey,

There’s magic in wandering

Over moorland and downland,

Through woods and through fields.

,

The world’s full of wonders

All waiting for wanderers.

Let me follow these paths

For as long as I can.

Autumn Equinox

On By Mick CanningIn autumn, Equinox, seasons26 Comments

Often, it still feels like summer at this time of year, but I feel autumn has truly arrived now. This morning I walked a path I haven’t walked for a week or more to find the sun was that much lower than it had been and I was constantly having to shade my eyes. It’s all about colours, now. Colours and the cooling of the world. Russet. Browns. Fading drab greens. Yellows and orange. Autumn can be beautiful, although it can also be dull and dreary and occasionally fierce. But mornings often arrive with an added sparkle, with heavy dews on cobwebs and leaves glinting in the low sun, hedgerows of thistledown, rosehips, and hawthorn. There is usually a freshness in the air, especially in the mornings, which has been absent for most of the summer, that invariably lifts my spirits.

I like summer, of course I do, but the arrival of autumn reminds me in some ways of the arrival of spring. In spring we have the stirring of life after a long period of hibernation, whereas the beginning of autumn always feels to me like the start of a new, second, outburst of life. Many plants have a sudden growth spurt, fruits and nuts and berries swell and glow and are plundered by birds and beasts. It is still warm, warm enough to bask in the sun and to feel hot walking up even quite gentle hills.

The Equinox occurs on Friday (at 2.03am in the UK, to be precise) and after this the hours of darkness outnumber the hours of daylight until the end of next March (counting dusk and pre-dawn as night time). After this, the year always feels to me quite different, even if the weather from the one day to the next is much the same. I can already feel myself slipping into a different place; the logs for the burner have arrived and have been stacked ready for use. The apples have been picked, shortly to be wrapped and stored away. Much in the garden is in the process of being cut back for winter. When the days are short and the nights are long, there will be many books to read, lots of music to listen to, a few beers to drink, and many long conversations to be had.

But also many long walks as well, I hope. I love winter too.

Yuck Time

On By Mick CanningIn Covid-19, poetry, project, Work in progress, writing38 Comments

Well, damn this blasted Covid.

March really isn’t going to plan at the moment. Having already messed up my creative plans for the month, even my Plan B has now fallen apart as we’ve coughed and groaned and generally felt sorry for ourselves. I did manage to write a couple of poems before the yuck set in, though, so all was not entirely lost.

We had plans to do some long walks, now the glorious Spring weather has finally arrived, getting ourselves ready for going away to walk some of the South Downs Way again next month.

At least we’ve got a sunny back garden to sit in, I suppose.

In the meantime, here’s an old photo randomly of a decorated window on a house in the Nepalese Himalaya I took in 1988.

Feels like quite a long while ago.

Saturday Rumination

On By Mick CanningIn Spring38 Comments

Sometimes, when the sun is shining and a blackbird is absolutely singing its heart out, so the air is filled with the beautiful liquid notes of its song, and when the spring leaves are coming out, nothing more is needed for contentment than a beer and a book in the garden.

There is still a keen freshness in the air, and the scent of the hops in the beer seem especially fragrant.

Nothing more is needed then than, perhaps, a ghostly, misty, shape arising from the marshes and speaking one’s name…

January 24th 2021

On By Mick CanningIn birds, weather, winter23 Comments

We usually hear the jackdaws some ten minutes or so before sunrise: jack, jack, jack, jack, and then the great silence descends for a while. The rooks chuck the odd aark into the mix, but it tends to get lost amid the jackdaw vocals. Once they have completed their flypast, it is a while before you notice any other birdsong. Gradually it seems to return, and then you realise it was there all along, but it was lost beneath the chorus of cacophonous corvids and still sounds muted once they are gone.

Jackdaws and rooks commonly form mixed flocks. Small groups of them tend to flit through here throughout the day, although never so vocally as at sunrise or sunset. At times, I have watched them heading towards the open countryside away to the east a little before sunset – small groups coming from different directions to the area where they tend to congregate, and from where they will then all fly off in a single flock to their roost together in an area of woodland at dusk.

It was another thick frost this morning, and then a red, red sky as though it was all afire, the clouds like volcanic effusions drifting across, by which time the rooks and jackdaws had scattered to their trees and roofs. Then the sky yellowed with the promise of snow, or did it only look that way because I was aware that was the forecast? When I go out into the back garden to scatter the coffee grounds, the chill of the air in my nostrils makes me think I can smell snow.

On time, the snow arrives, although it has barely reached the ground before melting, and quickly turns to sleet. While it is snowing, there is a brightness outside, even under the dark clouds, but once it turns to sleet, it somehow darkens and just becomes a little more miserable. As I look out of the window now, I see the wind picking up, a little thin sleet falling, and a uniformly grey sky.

Isn’t it time for spring yet?

Winter – 2

On By Mick CanningIn environment, Pre-History, weather, winter18 Comments

Nature dies down in winter. Certainly, at those latitudes where the days become much shorter and the temperatures plummet. Both wind and rain seem to become more frequent. Snow. It is a period of rest and renewal after autumn has put on a final glorious display of colour. Animals adapt to this in one of three ways: some will eat and eat of the autumn bounty of, especially, fruit, putting on large fat reserves and surviving the winter in a state of hibernation, their heart-rates dropping to a scarcely believable one or two beats a minute, their bodies slowly using these fat reserves for the little energy required to maintain a flickering life through those months. Some migrate, seeking a warmer climate until spring returns. These animals are, due to the obvious logistics required to travel hundreds of miles to reach those more hospitable climes, the larger animals and many of the birds. Travel over those kinds of distances would be out of the question for the smaller ones. Others stay put and, in the case of the plant eaters, scratch out a meagre living on whatever leaves and grasses survive through the winter. The carnivores, of course, stay and try to catch them.

Our Neolithic ancestors’ life cycles would be attuned to this pattern too. Autumn must have been lived fast and furiously. In the same way our medieval ancestors worked long hours to bring in the harvests, Neolithic man and woman must have used all the dwindling daylight to bring in as much food and fuel and dry bedding as possible before the winter period. Then by the end of autumn gathering would have largely ceased and they would have moved into a winter rhythm of life.

But how did they get through winter? What of the food they had gathered? Presumably, they had no way of storing fruit – could any of it be dried? Was it fermented for drink? Or was it all eaten as soon as it was gathered, as though they were all so many dormice seeking to build up their reserves? And could this, in fact, have been a part of their strategy to get through those months? To eat and eat until the perishable foods were all gone, and then to stop all but the most essential activities. To expend as little energy as possible and stay as warm as they could. Spending as much time as possible asleep.

And yet, they would still need to eat, and so with dwindling food reserves they would slaughter any beasts kept for that purpose, possibly smoking the meat to enable it to keep for as long as possible. Hunting would continue and might, in some ways, become a little easier. With less vegetation around, there would be less cover for their prey, and in snow there would be clear tracks to follow. But presumably this prey would still need to be pursued, and this would use precious energy, unless they relied more upon pits and snares.

Green Christmas

On By Mick CanningIn Beliefs, Christmas, environment, New Year36 Comments

Yesterday was beautiful.

I went out for a walk in the morning as the overnight mist was lifting, and the air was cool but not cold, under a sunny, clear sky filled with birdsong. I felt a powerful sense of renewal in the world.

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There is little new growth yet, but the trees were covered in buds. Although we are not long past the shortest day of the year, the ridiculously mild temperature and the sun which felt warm on my face, reminded me that there is one more minute of daylight today than there was yesterday, and tomorrow there will be one more than that. And it will not be long before each day gains an extra two minutes, then three, then four…

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The air smelt clearer and cleaner than it had for months, and I felt like beginning a long journey. I yearned to be walking on the Downs, or heading through fields and woods with my destination nothing more elaborate than a bed in a basic bunkhouse or hostel, and somewhere to get a meal, preferably in a tiny village surrounded by hills and streams and woods. This is a feeling I get every Spring, that it is a time to explore more of the world.

Everything seems to be fresh. I need to do something new, something positive. To plant some trees, perhaps (always a good idea).

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I thought of Christmas. This year, we had a string of lights in one room, with handfuls of greenery as the only other decorations. This, for me, is a way to make sense of the season. It has nothing to do with religion, unless it be the ancient religions that worshipped the sun and the moon and celebrated the turn of the year at the Winter Solstice when the seasons begin their long, slow journey back towards the promise of Spring and the harvests of Autumn. A simple wisdom, in tune with the natural world.

I do not, I cannot – I will not – associate it with any other form of mythical gods. For me, it is all about the natural cycle of the seasons, simple and uncomplicated.

And I particularly like the period when Christmas is definitely over, and we’re only just getting into the new year. Everything seems to have this feeling of renewal, which was the whole point of the Yule festival. A time to look forward and plan for the coming year. This will be where the tradition of New Year Resolutions comes from, no doubt.

This year, I shall resolve to try and simplify my life further, and to live more in tune with the natural world.

Winter – a Tanka

On By Mick CanningIn Haiku, poetry, tanka, winter, writing33 Comments

I was writing a haiku yesterday, and decided to go the extra mile with it. Traditionally in Japan these poems were sometimes written in the form of tanka, which are essentially poems of five lines rather than three, with a syllable count of 5/7/5/7/7.

They could also be written as linked verse, with one or two poets writing haiku, and others supplying the two remaining lines between each haiku.

I’ve gone down the linked verse route, and also given myself the remit that each verse (of two or three lines) must contain a word or sentiment linking it to those either side – something that was also commonly done.

Yesterday was cold and miserable, hence the results.

It’s my first attempt – please don’t be too harsh!

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The flowers have gone.

Crumbling stems standing askew,

In waterlogged soil.

 

Outlined against the grey sky,

Old willows by the stream.

 

Ten thousand leaves are

All that remain of autumn.

Wistful nostalgia.

 

Memories of warmer days,

Are all but forgotten now.

 

Wrapped up warm and snug,

Watching the grey willows weep.

Hands in my pockets.

 

Leaves fall slowly through the air,

Onto silent black waters.

 

Now a gust of wind

Swirls leaves around and around.

Racing each other.

 

Shifting clouds race overhead,

Sudden drizzle on the breeze.

 

Spiteful winter day,

Grasses shiver in the wind.

Low sunlight dazzles.

 

Walking in meditation,

Clouds unexpectedly clear.

 

Sudden bright sunshine

Reminds me the cold Winter,

Will change into Spring.

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Grumble Mutter Whinge

On By Mick CanningIn blogging, editing, walking, writing35 Comments

It is the first of March, today.

Meteorologically, it is the first day of spring. So, that virtually guarantees what weather we will have today; the sky is overcast and grey, there is a bitterly chill wind blowing and a spiteful, thin drizzle.

Spring! Oh, humour!

Arf!

Admittedly, the astronomical calendar tells us spring doesn’t arrive until around the 20th March, so winter still has cate blanchett to do whatever it will.

So that’s fine; it sort of reflects my mood at the moment, anyway. But at least going out for a walk always lifts my mood a little, and today is no exception. I’ve been working on my new novel quite intensely for a while, and I suddenly need to step back from it for a week or two.

Come up for air, as it were.

ladakh 5 panorama

Not this one!

And so I go for a walk in the miserably wintery springy weather. Ten minutes or so through the streets brings me to the common – a wooded area on the edge of the town which, on good days, is a pleasant enough place to walk, even if it doesn’t have any convenient mountains or long distance trails.

On bad days, though, it is full of dog walkers.

That sounds a bit mean, you may say. And, okay, you’re right. It is. But in my defence, when I say full of dog walkers (and dogs), I mean full!

Untitled-Grayscale-01

This one!

It is not unusual to be surrounded by dozens of dogs running madly around, the air filled with strident shouts of ‘Gawain! Guinevere! Come here at once!’ ‘Will you come here!’ ‘Put that down!’ ‘Keep still and he won’t hurt you!’ and then some wretched little tyke suddenly tugging at your trouser leg with a mouthful of razor-sharp teeth, to be followed by another shout of ‘Keep still, I said!’ from a voice that could etch glass.

But not today, fortunately.

And having had my walk, I can sort out a couple of other things on my writing list.

Once I got back, I edited a short story I promised for a project for our writing group. Job done – tick.

Next, I’ll begin the edit of a very long short story that has been hanging around for ages. So long, in fact, that I mentioned it in the ‘My Writing’ section on this blog when I first set it up, a year and a half ago. Tut. It’ll be good to get that finished, anyway. It’s my first attempt at a traditional murder mystery, and I rather got lost in my own convolutions.

If I get it to the point where I’m happy with it, I might put it out as an e-book, just to see what people think of it.

Ahem…if anyone buys it, of course.

And, as a bonus, I had an idea for another short story while I was out walking, so hooray!

Now to barricade the door against all the angry dog walkers.