Bloomin Marvellous!

 Summer's splashed right in and people and wildlife are soaking up the rays.

Like Missus Frog in our sink pond.

Like the Fisher Price fireman checking the tiny strawbs.

Like this beautiful green spider.

Are you enjoying the sunshine? Have you wildlife enjoying it too?

THE LONGEST DAY

Its the longest day in the UK, the summer solstice, when the thin gossamer between day and night is stretched to nothing and sunlight rules till 10pm GMT.

Yet despite an extended afternoon and evening of bright starshine I feel more worried and anxious on many fronts this year. There is a distinct deficit of hope in modern Britain and I feel it entering the solstice a wholly depressed and divided nation.

Not even the brave druids of Stonehenge or the overpaid boys playing for England this Midsummer have any chance of raising the mercury of my faith in the future.

Rather than the international, altruistic and heroic community that Thunderbirds predicted in the Sixties, a world in which the weak were always protected, we face a future of nationalistic, xenophobic states filled with increasingly selfish and intolerant regimes making citizens wary of foreigners and neighbouring countries. 

Being a quarter Italian, a descendant of Italian artisans who moved to Northern Britain in the 1800's to provide a craftsmanship demanded by the new Captains of the Cotton industry, I find this modern neurosis and the policies and referendums its produced abhorrent.

These policies have now reached my own door and look set to remain [no irony intended]. 

One of my many reactions to the tsunami of social injustice sweeping Britain and the world - anger, compassion, despair and form filling - is also to regularly retreat mentally into a place in which it is always safe and full of people that were nice to each other i.e. my childhood. I tend to do this memory tourism when all the daily grind is over in the evenings.

You might think that I am living in the past or burying my head in the sands of time or any other of those cliches but I find it a pleasant distraction to think and write about those tender years of mine, which hopefully many of you can also relate to. Unlike the future, I know my past. I was there. Hence the blog.

So on this, the Northern summer solstice I will enjoy the longest evening as best I can, with one eye on an unknown future and the other on the distant glow of childhood.

I wish all MC readers a happy soulful Solstice, whether it be summer or winter where you live.

OK, rant over. Back to the toys.

throw down the sword this midsummer: wishbone ash's classic album argus

As the weekend closest to Midsummer approaches and the bustle of fairy folk can be heard in the hedgerows I can do but one thing: celebrate the old world's turning with the soundtrack of the solstice itself, Argus by Wishbone Ash, the lords of Avalon when it came to Seventies rock.

Argus, with its beautiful and mysterious cover depicting an ancient soldier, perhaps Greek, perhaps Arthurian, as he or she stares out at a verdigris sky tumbling over a dark forest. Glorious.

This immortal image heralds what is to be found on the album itself, a veritable banquet of Excaliberesque epics and Warrior ballads. It's as if Ash recorded a festival live in Middle Earth and mixed it at Camelot, it really is.

Wishbone Ash were often labelled a college or uni band, their double flying-V guitars an electric novelty. I think this belittles them as they were so much more. I listened to all their classic albums incessantly in the Seventies and still enjoy them all now: Wishbone Ash, Pilgrimage and Argus to name but three.

For me Ash captured a moment, a zeitgeist utterly unique to that decade when a fascination for Tolkein, Arthurian legend, the Ancients and tapping into the green mythos fused perfectly with a brilliant rock lyricism and towering  harmonic guitarmanship. They were like wizard kings with strings!

Below is one of many You Tube links to the whole album but if you have never heard any of it before or indeed any Wishbone Ash then I implore you to sample just one song to start with, Throw Down The Sword, the quintessence of Ash's genius, which can be found by clicking below:

and the full Argus experience can be found by clicking the album cover below beginning with Time Was [sorry about the ads!].

Let me know what you think and enjoy your estival weekend, your Juhannus, your Midsummer's end.

hey, its midsummer's day!

Its the longest day and the shortest night of the year.

The old hippy in me yearns to celebrate on an ancient site like Glastonbury Tor.

As I can't be there here's a model I made way back in 1981 showing the Tor, a beast and a wizard! All very Arthurian! Underneath I inscribed the words 'be banished thou thing of darkness'!

Have you got any Arthurian - Middle Earth models and toys?

To commemorate Midsummer on the Tor vicariously we can enjoy this Wiki picture and listen to the essential Summer Solstice track, Leylines to Glassdom by Steve Hillage.

Just click here https://youtu.be/Xwt_5yyWiK4

Happy Summer Solstice readers.

How will you mark Midsummer?

THE DYING LIGHT OF MIDSUMMER

I took these photographs tonight of the darkening Midsummer sky around 10pm. The dramatic swirl illuminated by the last rays of the Sun really fired my Sci Fi senses and I imagined all kinds of ships landing!

LEYLINES TO GLASSDOM FOR MIDSUMMER

To celebrate the passing of Spring into Midsummer on this, the longest day of unending daylight, I dedicate this, Leylines to Glassdom, to all our readers and wish you all a long day filled with happiness. 

Leylines to Glassdom is an instrumental by guitar virtuoso Steve Hillage released in 1977. It captures the New Age spirit of the mid-to late 1970's perfectly and is a fitting soundtrack to the untrod dawn that awaits us tomorrow. It appears courtesy of You Tube.