After weeks of sunshine it has been still, overcast and even a little damp here on Bodmin Moor and as I cycled along the lanes I thought that today felt more like a quintessentially British Summer's day than it would do if the sky was blue and the sun was triumphantly blazing in the sky.
No British understatement in the way that the hedgerows have sprung to life, with the advent of Spring they are full of exhuberant life, yellow primroses, bluebells and the white thorn bushes all competing for space and there turn to flower and have sex before the sober business of just growing takes over. And the damp earth smells almost musk like, it smells literally earthy, rather than of some refined and overpriced scent.

In Cornwall there are a number of celebrations of the beginning of Summer but the most powerful for me is held at Padstow on May 1st and is called 'Obby Oss' Day. Throughout the day two large, circular dervishes dance their way through the narrow streets all the time being followed by massed ranks of locals beating a simple tattoo on their drums and singing that 'Sumer is icumen today'. If it sounds quaint and twee then believe me it is not. It feels genuinely pagan, a tradition that is not part of the Heritage Industry, as it is not sanitised, during this night one senses that many will experience sex for the first time and I would be fascinated to know the birth statistics in Padstow for nine months on from this date.
Life and death, beginnings and ends, at one point during Obby Os day the crowd stopped outside of a particular cottage and a very old woman was brought to the door and they sang to her, it was a different song to the normal one and it was intensely moving, they were acknowledging that she had not long to live but that as a Padstow Girl she, in her youth, had danced with the Oss and that her Summer had come but had now long gone and it was time to say goodbye. I actually ran away at the end as the tears were flooding down my face and I still cry now at the thought of it.

For me, I have always preferred Autumn to Summer and now I am entering the Autumn of my life but perhaps there is still time for a new life to be reborn for me.
Timsuzi xx