It’s Mayday – a day I associate with beardie weirdie types dancing round a maypole on a baking hot Spring day in a quintessentially English village. I actually organised such an event last year to mark the opening of a rural housing scheme. As soon as the music started I could hardly stop myself from doing a little jig which would have looked a bit daft as it was a corporate thing and I was wearing a suit.
Made me wonder if I was a morris man in a former life. Perhaps I was part of troupe touring the rural regions of England. After a day of stick clicking and hankie waving maybe I got drunk on scrumpy with some rosy-cheeked buxom serving wench. Sorry that was last night’s vivid lockdown dream!
No chance of maypole dancing this year, all that intimate weaving in and out just wouldn’t be on in these socially distant times.
Quite by contrast I also associate mayday with those large leftie gatherings for International Labour Day. Soviet leaders parading their military muscle on the streets of Moscow in front of thousands of cheering proletariat. You can’t do that either right now. All those people getting together for some big annual event. Makes me wonder what will happen to conferences post-Covid. They always seemed pretty pointless at the best of times.
The start of the month is usually when I plan what I’ll be doing in the coming weeks – holidays, weekends away, meals out, social events with friends and family. Here in the UK we’re still in full lockdown and while certain businesses and schools may reopen towards the end of the month it seems unlikely any of the above leisure activities will be allowed.
I have though tentatively planned a socially distant family barbecue for May 17th but we’ll have to see whether Boris let’s that happen.
This leaves the following highlights!
- The Council’s green bin waste service has resumed – yay – plus there’s talk of tips reopening at some point – time get rid of all that rubbish.
- A 1,000 piece puzzle of Van Gogh’s Starry Night is due to arrive from Amazon this weekend so we’ll get cracking with that.
- I’ve signed up for a Wordfeud league – it’s a kind of edgy version of Scrabble. I used to play it a couple of years ago until it started to annoy me as I wasn’t winning enough.
There’ll be more running, maybe I’ll have another go with the 30-day ab challenge, more work in the garden, might even decorate another room of the house for the hell of it! The longer lockdown goes on, I’m afraid, the nearer the looming threat of creosoting the shed and fence becomes.
Instead I might work on relaxing more – I’m still living my retirement life like I’ve got deadlines all the time and I need to spend at least a couple of hours a day chillin, reading, meditating.
Who knows, this might lead to some new direction in my life – could give morris dancing a go – or perhaps I could start writing a book about how a 60 year-old man’s plans to enjoy his best year ever were thwarted by coronavirus!