Summer solstice...

I got up at this morning just before five to watch the sun come up. Of course I couldn’t see it, but then I never expected to. It wasn’t so much the cloud, although it was a little cloudy, but living in streets with houses around doesn’t give the best view of the rising sun.

It wasn’t cold either as I welcomed the day with a sip of red wine and the crumbling of some bread into the small hole I’d made in the ground. I’ll try anything to make my plants get a spurt on. Litha, the first day of summer, summer solstice, the standing still of the sun. Sometimes it feels like the sun really is standing still, or at least stop - starting - stop - starting as the summer stumbles on.

Meanwhile at Stonehenge the sun was welcomed with chants and prayers, scattered flowers, singing and applause as twenty thousand people met to witness the sun’s rise. At Avebury, just along the road, only 500 turned up. This year though, surprise, surprise, it was too cloudy even on Salisbury plain for the sun to be seen. Of course the good old plods were there with their sniffer dogs to spoil the fun, moving through the happy crowds and arresting 22 people. Yes, as my good old fun dad always says “CALL THE POLICE!"; they always know just how to (screw things up) sort things out.

But enough of bullies, here's a happier memory. Many years ago on a school trip bus, full of egg sandwiches and the smell of sick, we arrived at Stonehenge and spent an hour or two wandering through the stones with clipboards and pencils in hand. Obviously it was raining but there was no admission fee, no fences and nothing to stop me from sitting on the alter stone - and I did. Maybe it’s an imagined recollection but I recall I felt the stone pulsing as I sat there… or maybe it was just my bum throbbing on the cold, wet stone.