May Day in Oxford

It is May Day, so there are one or two things to deal with off the bat.

Huzzah for Beltane!

Happy Birthday, Carol. (That’s my sister, and it’s her birthday, so everyone wish her very many happy returns of the day. She won’t hear you; she’s busy. She’s always busy, but I’m sure she’ll be touched, anyway).

Go dance around something immediately, preferably a pole. Do it!

Right... Almost done.

St Edmund Hall Quad

The husband and I are in Oxford, today, and I can’t think of a more wonderful place to be on May Day. We drove up early to catch the best of the festivities. I do hope that by the time you lot are reading this those festivities have lived up to expectations... and no I won’t be jumping off any bridges, and I won’t be encouraging anyone else to, either.

I have come to love Oxford. We visit regularly, and I hope that we shall continue to build ties to the city and its people, and to the husband’s old college, which has also welcomed me with open arms. I rather enjoy being the wife and mother of Aularians. If I could ever qualify, I might even consider enrolling for a postgraduate degree course here, just to become a full-fledged member of this rather lovely club.

Anyway, back to business... I’m hoping that with May Day, spring will finally... well, spring!

It hasn’t much, yet, has it? And I, for one, have been on tenterhooks waiting for its arrival.

We are all to blame, of course, and some of us more than others.

I know that I will fly too much this year, and that my flying will wipe out all the diligent shopping I do for local produce, and I know that, despite all that tree-planting and off-setting, I will still feel horribly guilty about it. 

I no longer buy wine from anywhere outside Europe, and almost all of the produce I buy is home grown, including the meat, and fish. I shop for clothes that were made in Europe, and I hope, fervently, that the cloth the clothes were made from wasn’t manufactured a million miles away, either, although it’s hard to be sure. I buy less, too, and I keep things more carefully. I now wash everything at 30 degrees in low impact detergents. I compost, too.

I really do feel guilty about those air miles, but, if it’s any consolation, I’m not taking holidays, I’m working. No... You’re right... It doesn’t help. 

Yet here we are, in May, the signs of spring are only just emerging out of the ground. My first tulips are a month late... Everything’s a month late, and some things haven’t come at all. 

Those who mock, mock by sneering at the term ‘Global Warming’. No it isn’t warm. Yes it is cold and wet. Yes, I see what you mean when you say that we were all wrong about ‘Global Warming’, but, actually, if you take your head out of your arse and think in terms of ‘Climate Change’... Do you think you could agree that the climate might have changed? Oh... You could?

It is May Day, today, and I am determined to be upbeat. It is one of the loveliest days of the year with some of the most charming, and scariest pagan traditions, and with a few bonkers goings-on in Oxford, too, which I hope I’m partaking of, about now.

I don’t know how many more May Days will look like this one... For goodness sake, people, this one doesn’t look like a proper May Day... Not if you stop to think about it.

Most of us have got children, and if we don’t, yet, we probably will have one day, and if we’re not likely ever to have our own children, that doesn’t mean we won’t be invested, in some way, in the next generation and the one after that, and any number of generations to come. So, if you could just think for a moment while you’re shopping, and if you could just consider how you use the Earth’s resources, that’d be great.

Me, I’m off to buy some more trees, and feel some more guilt, and look around for some lovely weekend retreats for the husband and me for later in the year that aren’t more than a couple of hundred miles from home.

Oh... Oxford looks rather lovely!