Ever since She Who Must and I moved into Casa MacBride there's been a tradition of going for a walk round the field behind the house at midnight on the summer solstice. Well, I call it a tradition, really we only did it the first year and rain has stopped play ever since. But just because we've only done it once it doesn't mean it's not a tradition, damn it! So last night we stayed up and waited for a break in the monsoon conditions. Come midnight the rain hadn't let up and by then She Who Must Get Up For Work The Next Morning was sound asleep anyway. No summer solstice for me.
We nearly forgot all about it anyway; there seems to have been a dearth of media interest in our happy pagan rituals this year. Instead of the usual hear tearing and shirt rending about those dreadful hippies, ravers and druids marching about all over Stonehenge getting into trouble with the police that usually goes on for weeks before hand it's been pretty much ignored. I blame the World Cup. Damn over-paid footballists and their running around like twits.
Yes, so, we had no advance notice -- we knew the solstice was coming, but only had a vague idea when. And all our calendars are blank on the subject, even the one with cats on it in the kitchen that lists things like Waitangi Day (New Zealand holiday February the 6th). So no dancing half-naked round a stone circle at sunrise for us.
But all that will change when we buy what has become known as 'The Dream House'. This is the one we'll move to when we've saved up whatever ridiculous amount of money's needed to buy a chunk of land and convert or build something on it. And among the things I'll be building is my own stone circle. Yes, I could buy a place with one already installed, but I want to be buried in mine* along with an as yet unspecified number of vestal virgins, gewgaws, and whatever car I happen to be driving at the time. That'll confuse the hell out of archaeologists 3,000 years from now.
Oh, and I'll put a curse on my tomb too -- that'll teach the grave-robbing bastards to leave my mouldy old corpse alone!
* But not till I'm dead, thank you very much