Strange voices are saying (What did they say?) Things I can't understand...

It's Midsummer, Summer Solstice, the Longest Day, St John’s Day, St. Hans Day, Fors Fortuna, Litha, Alban Hefin, Enyovden, Ukon juhla - whatever you call it, it's a milestone!

In the UK, of course, all the pseudo-Druids, Neo-Pagans, hippies and other assorted weirdos head for Stonehenge to celebrate. We'll stay at home, and will probably clink a glass in the garden or something.

Meanwhile, in Sweden...

From the Bilingual by Music website:

Midsummer's Day is one of the most important holidays of the year in Sweden, and probably the most uniquely Swedish in the way it is celebrated.

Raising and dancing around a midsommarstång pole is an activity that attracts families and many others. Before the maypole is raised, greens and flowers are collected and used to cover the entire pole. People dancing around the pole listen to traditional music and sing songs associated with the holiday. Some wear traditional folk costumes or crowns made of wild springs and wildflowers on their heads.

Music plays a big part at the Midsummer celebrations. The most famous song sung when dancing around the maypole is Små grodorna [which in English is “Little frogs”]:

Små grodorna (Swedish Midsummer)

The melody originates from a military march from the French revolution La Chanson de l’Oignon (“The onion song”), with the chorus “Au pas, camarade, au pas camarade / au pas, au pas, au pas!” (“In step, comrade”). The enemies of the French at the time, the British, changed the text with condescending irony to “Au pas, grenouilles!” (“In step, little frogs”).

Små grodorna in Swedish:

Små grodorna, små grodorna är lustiga att se.
Små grodorna, små grodorna är lustiga att se.
Ej öron, ej öron, ej svansar hava de.
Ej öron, ej öron, ej svansar hava de.
Kou ack ack ack, kou ack ack ack,
kou ack ack ack ack kaa.
Kou ack ack ack, kou ack ack ack,
kou ack ack ack ack kaa.

English version (direct translation):

The little frogs, the little frogs are funny to observe.
The little frogs, the little frogs are funny to observe.
No ears, no ears, no tails do they possess.
No ears, no ears, no tails do they possess.
Kou ack ack ack, kou ack ack ack,
kou ack ack ack ack kaa.
Kou ack ack ack, kou ack ack ack,
kou ack ack ack ack kaa.

How bizarre.

We have a far better way to mark the occasion (and the ongoing heatwave!) - with Bananarama!

Bananarama - Cruel Summer

However one chooses to celebrate, it is worth doing - for after today, the nights start drawing in once more..!

Make the most of it, dear reader.

---

[Footnote: If some of this seems familiar - yes, I did post about this over at the Dolores Delargo Museum of Camp in 2021]

Let it shine on in

Daylilies seem most appropriate on this, the Longest Day...

The sun's out [and will be until quite late - although the nights do technically start drawing-in from tomorrow], which makes everything - even being in the office, just looking out of the window - feel better.

Here's a rather different take on an appropriate number for the day for your delectation, dear reader:

Milk & Sugar - Let The Sun Shine

Enjoy it while it lasts!

Cos here I go again

It's Midsummer's Day/the Summer Solstice today and inevitably - although it's nowhere near as good weather at the moment - whenever summer is mentioned in this country the collective thoughts of an entire generation turn back to this week forty-seven years ago (gulp!), when the fabled "Heatwave of 1976" began. The hottest summer for more than 350 years, coinciding nicely with the school holidays, the UK experienced fifteen consecutive days over 32C (89.6F) and nary a cloud, let alone any rain, for more than three months! Bliss.

I have of course blogged about it many times before and, in the interests of recycling (again), here's one I made earlier:

Here are some facts about the Summer of '76:

• Many householders in Wales and the west of England were left without tap water for much of the day when temperatures were frequently over 80F; stand-pipes were installed in the streets as the pavements cracked or melted around them.
• The National Water Council made repeat appeals to people to save and recycle water, with one advert explaining jobs are more important than flower beds; and hosepipe use was banned.
• People across the country were told to put bricks or plastic bags full of water in their toilet cisterns and to use washing-up water to pour down the toilet instead of flushing.

• The rivers Don, Sheaf, Shire Brook and Meers Brook in Sheffield all ran completely dry, as did the reservoirs in Wales.
• In addition to appointing a Minister for Drought, James Callaghan’s Labour government actually drafted emergency plans to bring water by tanker from Norway.
• Nationally £500 million of crops were destroyed and food prices soared by 12%.
• Brewery Shepherd Neame, however, reported beer sales up by 8% on the previous year and at their highest since the war - the company had not been troubled by the weather as it had its own well, which was still plentiful.

It was indeed a long, long summer, with a lot of happy memories - and lots of memorable choons to accompany them...

...not least the Top Ten of this very week in 1976, which included The Boys Are Back In Town by Thin Lizzy, Jolene by Dolly Parton, Heart On My Sleeve by Gallagher And Lyle, Let's Stick Together by Bryan Ferry, Young Hearts Run Free by Candi Staton, Tonight's The Night by Rod Stewart and You Just Might See Me Cry by Our Kid. You To Me Are Everything by the Real Thing was at Number 1, and at Number 2 the (very silly) Combine Harvester by The Wurzels.

Which just leaves one song. Now, I am no Paul McCartney fan by any stretch of the imagination - but, whenever I hear Silly Love Songs by Wings, I am instantaneously transported back to those heady, hot days...

Wings – Silly Love Songs

"What's wrong with that?
I'd like to know."

That's what takes me high

Call that a Dahlia?

It's Midsummer's Day, folks - and, for once, the UK has actually been experiencing a summer for this to be the middle of! I love the long days, and the fact it's warm and (occasionally) sunny makes sitting in the garden of an evening a real joy.

I'm also greatly relieved at the news that, due to several voluntary departures in our team I will no longer have to sit an interview for my own job - whoo hoo!!

Today also happens to be the 50th birthday of Crouch End's finest, the lady who provided our summer soundtrack in the Millennium year, Sonique.

Coincidentally, the lady's biggest hit is quite appropriate to my mood...

Sonique - Feels So Good

Many happy returns, Sonique (born Sonia Marina Clarke, 21st June 1968)

Where the white jasmine blends with the rose

Calendula and Osteospermum in the extensive gardens at Dolores Delargo Towers

MID-Summer already? It hardly feels like it has started yet...

What better way to celebrate the longest day of the year [it's all downhill from here, folks!] than with not one, but two magnificent voices - Dame Joan Sutherland and Marilyn Horne - on (what else but) The Flower Duet? Sigh.

Dame Joan Sutherland and Marilyn Horne - Flower Duet [Delibes Lakmé]

Under the dense canopy
Where the white jasmine
Blends with the rose
On the flowering bank
Laughing at the morning
Come, let us drift down together
Let us gently glide along
With the enchanting flow
Of the fleeing current
On the rippling surface
With a lazy hand
Let us reach the shore
Where the source sleeps
And the bird sings
Under the dense canopy
Under the white jasmine
Let us drift down together

A joy.

So take off all your clothes

Asarina scandens in the gardens at Dolores Delargo Towers.

It's the Summer Solstice, and it has been a hot one (yay!). We have been busy scrubbing layers of nicotine off surfaces so we leave the place in a fit state for the next tenants, but in-between bouts of slog we have been enjoying the delights of the garden (most of which will be moving with us, of course) - and it's still light at 10pm!

Here's an appropriate song for a mid-summer's day - and one of my favourite videos ever - from the lovely Tiga:

Tiga - Hot in Herre

Nelly, whooooo?

Cruel

Today is the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year - almost, but not quite, the designated official Midsummer's Day (which, confusingly, falls on Sunday 24th).

Regardless, we in the UK inevitably (but especially this year) greet today with amazement. How can it be mid summer? It hasn't even started yet! Ad infinitum. [We wouldn't be Brits if we didn't talk about the weather, after all. And for weeks and weeks it has been shit...]

Enough of this shenanigans, let's leave it to Bananarama (again - in their 30th anniversary year) to sum it all up quite neatly - Cruel Summer, indeed!

Bananarama - Cruel Summer

PS Midsummer's Eve is a time associated with witches, magic, fairies and dancing. I'd better start planning my outfit for Saturday!

PPS The nights start drawing in from here, folks...

Oh those summer nights

Today is the longest day of the year...

According to The Order of Bards Ovates & Druids:

The Summer Solstice is the time of maximum light - when the countryside around us revels in colourful and fragrant splendour. This time is known in the Druid tradition as that of Alban Hefin - 'The Light of Summer' or 'The Light of the Shore'.

At Alban Hefin the spiral of the year has expanded to its widest point and now the hours of light are as long as they will ever be. After 21st or 22nd June, the sun's power will begin to wane and the days grow shorter. The sun has touched the northernmost point along the horizon and is about to embark upon the long journey back south, ending at Alban Arthan, the Winter Solstice, in mid-December.

The Summer Solstice time was an event of tremendous importance to the Druids of the New Stone Age, who built a number of magnificent megaliths aligned to the sunrise on this day. In southwest England, the thread of tradition connects the 5,000-year-old temple of Stonehenge with ritual activities through the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, and into modern times. Today many modern druid orders, including The Order of Bards Ovates & Druids, gather here to watch the first rays of the sun shine above the 'hele stone.' Another great stone temple to the Summer Solstice is at Callanish on the island of Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides. Here, four rows of stones lead into a circle from the four directions, forming a Celtic cross in the landscape, and the stones form an astronomical observatory aligned to the solstice sunrises and sunsets, as well as to the equinoxes. Callanish is so far north, the sky never actually darkens on a midsummer night. This is also the case at the mysteriously beautiful stone circle, the Ring of Brodgar, on Orkney, which was known for centuries by local people as the Temple of the Sun, aligned as it is to the midsummer sunrise.

In Cornwall and Wales boys and girls, bedecked in garlands of flowers, went dancing and spinning around the great fires. Young men whirled flaming brands around their heads to form sun-wheels, balanced blazing barrels on top of poles or performed feats of daring such as jumping through the tall flames - perhaps to encourage the corn to leap up too. When the flames died down to glowing coals, dancers held hands and skipped through them, being careful not to break the chain, which would bring bad luck. The ashes from the fires were believed to have magical powers, and farmers carefully collected them to scatter around their fields or the animals' barns. On St. John's Eve, every hill in Cornwall blazes like a beacon that can be seen for miles around, as they did in days of old, while in some towns chains of dancers spiral through the streets in the ancient serpentine dance.

The Summer Solstice was one of the three Spirit Nights of the year, the other two being Beltaine and Samhain. Faeries and ghosts were abroad, easily visible to those whose sensitivities made the veil between the worlds appear exceptionally thin.

This was a good time to cull magical and healing herbs: fern seed gathered on midsummer's eve could make one invisible; elderberries warded off enchantment; stonecrop, vervain, and yarrow were hung in special places around the house for protection against the evil eye and death. Above all, this was the time for the plucking St. John's wort, the golden, star-shaped flower that was first of all herbs to be gathered on St. John's Eve. Called the 'blessed plant' in Wales, it was renowned throughout the Celtic lands for bringing peace and prosperity to the house, health to the animals and a bountiful harvest. It was cast into the midsummer bonfires in Scotland, and placed over the doors of houses and farm buildings for its protective powers. For these magical plants were filled with the energy of the sun at its peak, now transformed into green blessings for the human realm.

Ah, summer!

Gazzara - The Spirit of Summer (Belladonna remix)

It's all downhill from here, folks...