May 2024
I don’t know about you, but I haven’t really known what to wear when I got up in the morning since last Autumn. There have been days when I’ve started out with woolly sweaters over thermals, then had to go home and change for light cotton – only to don a lined waterproof within an hour during the afternoon.
It’s not just me that’s confused. The ground beneath our wellies doesn’t know which month we’re in. The soil has hardly emerged from beneath the floods that have kept swathes of farmland in anaerobic suffocation for months. Lying beneath permanent stagnant pools has destroyed the fertility of a significant proportion of arable land. This means we’re at risk of more rises in the prices of British farmers’ fruit and vegetables, adding to the cost of living.
We aren’t alone: not only has the availability of British potatoes created the usual supply and demand issue, but we can’t import alternatives from elsewhere, because the seasons have gone wrong all over the planet. It used to be sensible not to give up warm clothing until ‘may be out’ – meaning that when hawthorn blossom appears, the weather is likely to be warm enough to shed a layer of clothing. People assumed the saying meant ‘May’ the month, because hawthorn blossom used to appear during May. The warmth of April meant many signs associated with summer were seen up to six weeks early.
In 2022, the British Trust for Ornithology reported swallows are now able to overwinter in Britain, due to our warming climate, saving them the 6,000-mile flight to South Africa.
Traditional country sayings are beginning to lose their meaning. Modern shepherds could be forgiven for ignoring red skies, regardless of whether they appear at night or in the morning, because there’s not much evidence of a correlation between the phenomenon and delight or a warning.
Despite upgrading computers used by weather forecasters, there seems to be a secret opinion that the weather is becoming more unpredictable, and not just in Britain. Some of us remember Michael Fish insisting there was no hurricane on the way the night of ‘The Great Storm’ in 1987. I remember I was staying at a hotel near to the Alexandra Palace in London. A colleague found she was sharing her bedroom with a large tree.
May is an appropriate time to associate with trees. Especially now our weather has challenged the fertility of our fields and threatens our food security. It’s believed dancing around the Maypole began – possibly in what is now Germany – as a fertility ritual. Pagans would dance around a living tree, newly in leaf, praising Spring, heralding hope for a fruitful summer.
According to modern psychologists and colour-theorists the colour of hope is yellow. Here we are with the last of the daffodils. Dandelions reminding us it’s time to mow the grass. Tulips throwing competing colours at us, as we squelch through the still sodden ground. We certainly need hope. In May the Celts would celebrate Beltane as the beginning of summer, and light bonfires with wood salvaged from forest casualties dating back to winter and early winds. Beltane was the time of the ‘Wicker Man’… Would wood burn? Ask Edward.
We’ve been warned; every time we burn things, we harm our environment. For every example of care we take, nations create tons of carbon dioxide by going to war. We can’t dig for survival in the countryside when our fellow creatures destroy our climate in pursuit of victory. Ask farmers in any country. War is suicide.
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