June Folklore - sponsored by KetaVision

And so welcome to June. Or, as we must all now learn to call it - The Month of June, sponsored by KetaVision.

I thought hard before choosing KetaVision as our sponsor - or, as I prefer to say - Reputation Co-Edifier. But  their slogan - "The Entertainment System that anaesthetises you from reality" - was the kind of image I wanted the Beaker Folk to project in this hardest of early twenty-first centuries. And I couldn't really imagine anyone else giving us such large amounts of money, either.

June as a month is of great folkloric significance - and this June in particular is particularly stunning. For example, this June starts on the 1st of the month - which is traditional - with a New Moon! And, somewhere in the world, a Solar Eclipse! This hasn't happened since quite recently, which we think is terribly imporant.

Meanwhile, the BBC programme "Springwatch" has just started. Even as the BBC's weather forecasters have started claiming it's now "Summer". I'm trying to work out if this is a cunning plan on the part of the "Springwatch" producers to make it look like Global Warming is happening - and whether future series will be broadcast from a beach in the Med in August, to further increase the "oo isn't Spring warm this year" effect.

Back to solar matters, and in June each year we have a Solstice, at which we of the Beaker Folk fail to get up because it's so early. Although the following day, we greet each other with that traditional blessing "Nights are drawing in", to which the correct response is "Soon be Christmas." People in the Southern Hemisphere should note that, since it's December* down under, this response is optional.

On St John's Eve, all the young people of country areas would, until the Victorians stopped it, go out into the woods and fields to celebrate Midsummer. This was normally followed by that other great rural tradition, a baby-boom in March.

This June is also brought to you by the colour green, the number 3, the Letters A and B and the belief that Sesame Street is produced to you by a bunch of lefty pink-liberals. Although we suspect that this belief may only really be held by Muppets.

* Only joking.