Important Imbolc Innovations

Apparently Imbolc (1 Feb) is an important day for thinking about the lactation of ewes.  Not being a subject in which I have a great interest, I didn't think about it for very long.  But that didn't stop Marston Mortaine for being arrested for sheep worrying.  Thank goodness it was Young Keith's uncle the police constable that caught him.  Marston's explanation, that he was just checking if the ewes were lactating, could have got him three years if it had made it to court.  As it was I'm not sure he wasn't pulling the wool over our eyes.  He's back in the Great House now, but looking a little sheepish.  We've told him he's baa-d.  But he assures us that  his innocence is as the whitest fleece that has been dyed in lye.  Whatever that is.

Imbolc and its Christian counterpart Candlesmas (2 Feb) are halfway from Winter Solstice to Vernal Equinox.  You could see it as the North-East of the year, if you imagine Yule as the North and Midsummer as the South.  In which case we can see that, at least in these climes, although the days are getting longer they're still very cold - North-East being the coldest wind direction round here.  In the Southern hemisphere please reverse all this.  You're presumably round about the warmest time of the year, but realising that the nights are getting longer. Go and have a beer... oh, you did already.

So it is a time for celebrating the return - albeit slow - of the light.  Knowing that from here on in the days will be lengthening rapidly, the warmth starting to return and - apparently - the ewes lactating.  Did the Ancients really have nothing better to celebrate?  It's got to be a long, cold, dark winter before the lactation of the ewes becomes a matter of much excitement.  Unless, presumably, you're a sheep.

Needless to say, the Beaker People celebrate Imbolc with a nice big bonfire.  No Wicker Person this time, though.  Nor, as Marston suggested, a Wicker Sheep.  And on Tuesday we're going to be celebrating Candlesmas with a Candle-lit parade round the grounds.
We realise that Tuesday we should be getting a groundhog (or, if you prefer, woodchuck) out to see what the weather is going to be like for the next six weeks.  But we're in enough trouble with Woburn Abbey as it is.  So instead, Burton will tomorrow be facilitating a three-hour seminar in applied xylozoomathematics, at which we will be able to work out precisely how much wood a wood chuck would chuck, in the unlikely event that it would chuck wood.
Apart from that, we've got the Community PA system set up.  At exactly 6am on Tuesday it switches across from Enya to "I've Got You Babe".  And then, rather amusingly, it will happen again Wednesday.  And Thursday.  And Friday.
It promises to be a big day tomorrow, and a long week all round.