St John's Eve and Midsummer's Day

If the first of June marks the first day of meteorological Summer, and astronomical summer starts on the Solstice on the 21st June how is it that Mid-summer was traditionally celebrated with festivals on the 24th?

It was connected to St John's Day, when to protect future crops and livestock  bonfires were lit to banish evil spirits and bring good weather. Midsummer fairs and midsummer markets were held with celebrations in many places. 

Today, St Johns Eve, it was thought that plants gathered for medicinal purposes had special powers. St John's Wort being very important. Other protective herbs including yarrow, mugwort - which protected against witches and thunder,  and chamomile, were also gathered and hung in the home and cowshed. 

 So tomorrow is St Johns Day with many associated weather sayings

 

Before St John's Day we pray for rain, after that we get it anyway

Cut your thistles before St John,

You will have two instead of one. 

Never rued the man who laid in his fuel before St John.

Here is what Thomas Tusser wrote in his Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry in 1557.

At Midsummer, downe with the brambles and brakes

and after, abrode with they forks and their rakes:

Set mowers a mowing, where meadow is grown,

the longer now standing the worse to be mowne.

(brakes are ferns or bracken)

Another old saying from history 

If Midsummer Day be never so little rainy, the hazel and walnut will be scarce, corn smitten in many places; but apples, pears and plums will not be hurt.

"Never so little rainy"? 

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A Saturday Post Including Tennis, Book News and Comment Questions.

 Well, here in Suffolk it's been a gloriously sunny week. I'm one of those people who loves the heat, although it was very hot for both the Keep Moving Group and my second week at the Arthritis management/exercise class, which was a bit sweaty! Other than that I've cut the grass, been shopping -  early to beat the heat, made bread and quiche, visited an art exhibition and popped out even earlier to the midweek boot-sale (for exercise!!)  and then had very lazy afternoons enjoying the men's tennis from the Queens Club on TV. Cam Norrie and Dan Evans went out before the quarter finals . Jacob Fearnley lost in the quarter finals but has only been on the circuit for a year and  was ranked around 600 in the world this time last year and now he's in the top 60 - what a story! Jack Draper, the British number one is through to the semi-finals today. I'll be watching for sure.

 This is the first grass court tennis that many have played this year, a preparation for Wimbledon which starts on the 30th. Midweek the wild card list for Wimbledon was published and so many young British guys have been given them. The future of British tennis is hopeful.

One thing new for this year is the absence of on court line judges - everything is electronic now. It's stopped those challenges by players on the big screen which spectators enjoyed even if umpires didn't.

I finished reading The Crash by Robert Peston which is his second book about journalist Gil Peck. This didn't seem as good as the first book which was set in 1997 at the time of the General Election. It was a bit confusing at the start until it got going. The Crash is set in  2007 at the very start of a  financial crisis when a bank's collapse set off a chain of events that travelled around the world. Gil Peck has moved from newspaper journalist to broadcasting but when his part-time lover - who happens to be a director of the Bank of England - commits suicide, he doesn't believe it and investigates, which leads to danger.

Then onto the Homecoming by Kate Morton. I said the size might put me off but with the large typeface and double spaced lines this was a much larger book than it needed to be! So it was actually read quite quickly. We don't have many books here that are  set in Australia (that I know of)  so it was odd that I've  read two this month (Nevil Shute was the other)

 

The Homecoming is one of those stories set mainly in two different time lines - 1959 and 2018. 

Adelaide Hills, Christmas Eve, 1959: At the end of a scorching hot day, beside a creek on the grounds of a grand country house, a local man makes a terrible discovery. Police are called, and the small town of Tambilla becomes embroiled in one of the most baffling murder investigations in the history of South Australia.

Many years later and thousands of miles away, Jess is a journalist in search of a story. Having lived and worked in London for two decades, she now finds herself unemployed and struggling to make ends meet. A phone call out of nowhere summons her back to Sydney, where her beloved grandmother Nora, who raised Jess when her mother could not, has suffered a fall and is seriously ill in the hospital.

At Nora's house, Jess discovers a true crime book chronicling a long-buried police case: the Turner Family Tragedy of 1959. It is only when Jess skims through its pages that she finds a shocking connection between her own family and this notorious event – a mystery that has never been satisfactorily resolved.

It's about secrets and lies and is well written. I'd never read this well known author before but will probably go on to read more of her work.

My post about remembering the complications of moving house during covid morphed into something entirely different. Was there anywhere in my post where I said covid was funny? It was only the strange headlines in newspapers at the time seeming so odd that they made me smile. Did I have lack of respect for people still suffering? I don't think so, my post was really about my sister querying when covid regulations made moving difficult.

Did I actually read all of the book I mentioned? Good grief it was 4 years ago! I've no idea if I read every single word or not but I did copy those strange headlines onto a blog post just because they seemed too strange to be believable.

I could have deleted some of those comments but left them for discussion, which allowed people to jump on what others said and turned what I thought to be a fairly innocuous post into something I didn't plan or want. 

Now anon (you know who you are) will say that I welcome comments one week and complain about them the next!

All Jolly Good Fun!

Have a good weekend, I'll be back Monday - with a dozen less readers no doubt!

Solstice 20th/21st

 From the Latin Sol meaning sun and sistere "cause to stand still"

The summer solstice, when the sun is directly overhead at the Tropic of Cancer and daylight hours are the longest for us here. 

We say a day, but really the Solstice is just one moment in time - UK time 3.42am tomorrow morning.

Some people will be joining the Druids at Stonehenge for an all night vigil and to watch the sunrise or heading to a Neolithic passage tomb on Anglesey where the inner burial chamber is lit up by a shaft of light as the sun rises.

In the past bonfires would have been lit and the solstice was once said to be the perfect time to gather herbs, especially Vervain, which was cultivated as a medicinal herb in Medieval times for use as a relaxant or nerve tonic.

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