Preparations for the Equinox are now well under way for the Beaker Folk. The traditional Blackberry and Apple pie, over fourteen feet in diameter and six deep, is baking in the interior of the giant Pie Mound just beyond the orchard. (Please can people not jump up and down on the top of the Pie Mound? People got awfully scalded after they fell through last year). However Hnaef could do with some help with the baking - he's been stoking for the last three days and now is now both shattered and short of firewood.
Note that the Solstice is 13.04 tomorrow afternoon British Summer Time. So you all get a lay-in. However starting at 11 am, the proceedings will be as follows:
Donning of the hi-viz (pink, from the Solstice to Samhain, with steel toe-capped books for Oblates and Assistant Archdruids)
Lighting of the Autumn fire
Ceremonial processing of the druids (clockwise around the bonfire - mind the sparks, those hi-viz vests were a job lot, and aren't guaranteed fireproof)
Scattering of the maple leaves (Hnaef to organise finding some maple trees)
Racing around the orchard trying to get away from the burning maple leaves
Collective cry of "nights are definitely drawing in. Starting to feel a bit nippy in the evenings...
Buglers and Tabla Drum players perform the ritual hymn ("March of the Druids")
To celebrate the sheer equinoctialness of it all, Burton will then perform a liturgical tightrope walk along a rope strung across the duck pond. He's feeling a bit nervous at the minute, so please can you all stop sneaking up behind him and shouting "splash"!
The service will conclude in utter chaos, as is traditional, and the handing out of portions of apple and blackberry pie that, if last year's is anything to go by, will either be freezing cold or burnt to a crisp.
Tonight's anthem at Howling at the Moon will be "Last Day of Summer" (K MacColl)
Has Burton recovered from his tumble into the duck pond? May I suggest that next year he might be issued with a suitably coloured and decorated bouyancy aid???
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