Release the Mythical Beasts

This is so embarrassing.

And I should have noticed.

Normally on the morning of the Summer Solstice we have problems with the mythical beasts. They try to follow the timetables, but they originated before British Summer Time. So they have a habit of turning up an hour late, thinking that BST is GMT. Or vice versa. Or something.

But this Summer Solstice, I locked Drayton Parslow in the Doily Shed for messing with my orders of service.

I just went to let him out. It's been five days, after all. And nobody's got a bladder that strong. And we needed to sell some doilies.

And found that the Woodwose, the Piper at the Gates of Dawn, and Hern the Hunter, had all followed me in for a laugh. 

Do you have any idea how terrified a Fundamentalist Baptist gets, when locked in a shed for five days with three mythical creatures?

No. More than that.

He's run off screaming to his cottage. And while I realise that, in a very real sense, we are all to blame, I particularly think his wife, Marjory, has let him down. Surely she should have reported his absence by now.

Liturgy for the Day After Summer Solstice

 Archdruid:  Nights are drawing in

All: Soon be Christmas.

Summer Solstice Sunrise Celebration

Archdruid: Hail, mighty Solstice Sun!

All: Risen like a big, orange, hot ball of exploding gas.

Archdruid: That's a bit literalist innit?

All: Yeah. Drayton Parslow thought it was all a bit pagan, and so he  made everything literal and sober.

Archdruid: So the bit about the mighty chariot crossing the depths of the sea beneath the worlds, the horses' fetlocks flowing in the wind?

All: "You were just at the other side of the world but now you're back on this side again," you mean?

Archdruid: And all that stuff about Phoebus Apollo shining in wisdom and bringing life to the earth?

All: "Gonna be a scorcher today, keep hydrated!"

Archdruid: OK. I'm just off to tie Drayton up in the Doily Shed. See you for sunset.

All: Pimm's already on ice!

Archdruid: And can someone get that Rollright Stone back? People are gonna miss it.

Fathering Sunday

 I'd like to wish a happy and profound Fathering Sunday to all those that celebrate it. Fathering Sunday is the day on which all Beaker Folk try desperately not to offend anyone, which coincidentally managing to offend absolutely everyone as we thrash around trying to celebrate good fathers while remembering those with bad fathers, absent fathers, the Godfather, Father Christmas, and on this most Trinity of all Sundays, the Father, Mother and/or Genderfluid Parent of us all. Obviously we give it its traditional English name, not the modern commercial American ripoff name.

Burton Dasset didn't really help, to be honest. He's got caught up in some of kind of "muscular Christianity" thing - a relapse to his days at Public School, I think, though I did catch him watching American wrestling on the telly the other day. Or maybe he's got too inspired by Elon Mush. Or he's having a reaction to a career in stock accounting computer systems.  But I found the following a slightly odd liturgy: 

Burton: Who's the Daddy?

All: God!

Burton: Burton can't hear you!  Who's the Daddy?

All: God! 

They continue for hours

At least that was the planned liturgy. What actually happened was that, underwhelmed by a 7-stone weaking trying to prove his virility, the congregation went off to the Beaker Barista's for a freeform Cafe Church instead.

Next year, Fathering Sunday coincides with Summer Solstice. So we will make another futile attempt to ignore it. Burton's been told if he keeps up this weird macho business any longer, we're going to be looking into exorcism. He's too old for a midlife crisis, and too young to be going senile. So it's gonna be the strappy table and the Slazenger to beat the demons out.

Nativity of Thomas Hardy (1840)

A field gate near Mellstock. Two Yokels lean over the gate, equipped with straws in mouths.

First Yokel: 'tis that Thomas Hardy's birthday again.

Second Yokel: Aye. 

1Y: Odd that. I thought he had one last year.

2Y: That he did.

1Y: He must be mortal sharp, to have a birthday every year.

2Y: That he be.

1Y: Shall us up-along to Peter's Finger in Mixen Lane, for a pretty little drap o' tipple afore nammit-tide?

2Y: Wi' all my heart. But 'Spoons is cheaper.

1Y: 'Tis truth. And 'tis Monday Club.

2Y: Then let us away and fill our empty hearts with cheap Greene King.

A folk tune, played by a mystical fiddler, drifts across the heath. Milkmaids swoon and crows fall from the sky. While, afar off, on Casterbridge gallows, can just be seen the body of a hanged man.