The Longest Day

Apparently 20,000 people gathered at Stonehenge to greet the sun this morning [around 4.52 am]as it is the Summer Solstice. The press reports say…

As the sun rose, a woman climbed a rock in the circle centre and blew a horn, welcoming in the longest day of the year north of the equator. Drums, tambourines, and cheers reverberated in the background.

"It means a lot to us ... being British and following our pagan roots," said Victoria Campbell, who watched on, wearing a pair of white angel's wings and had a mass of multicoloured flowers in her hair.

"It's amazing. The wonderful thing is all these people experiencing it and wondering what this was all for trying to work out in their own minds - what was it all?" said Andy Barrett.

"The truthful answer is we don't know exactly what it was for," said Amanda Chadburn, an archaeologist with English Heritage, which manages the site.

We are definitely not pagans in this house- and I thought Monday would be a day off – but was amazed around 5.30am to discover Bob already up and working on his PC! Most uncharacteristic behaviour. This may be the Longest Day, but I feel like i have just lived through the Longest Weekend!

While the rest of the world was involved in football, golf and other sports, I was involved in church stuff [don’t worry – I love that, and don’t care two hoots about sport!] as well as other things

Saturday morning was the Men’s Breakfast

There was bacon! and a good number of blokes in attendance, talking about blokey stuff [at least, I presume they were – I was in the kitchen, as I had volunteered to wash up]

Then I came home and made an outfit for Bugsy Malone – waistcoat and trousers.

Then in the evening we had a Quiz Night which was enormous fun – thank you to all the organisers.

Then it was Sunday

The Morning Service from Radio 4 was incredibly moving – from Six Bells, Abertillery in Wales – 50 years after the awful colliery explosion when 45 miners died. I may blog about this later in the week – but you can hear ‘listen again’ through the BBC i-player [click here]

It was Father’s Day – and we had a number of visitors with us at the Morning Service.

After Church we called in at The Castle Hotel where my friend Sarah, owner of Cherry Tree Gifts was organising a Craft, Cakes and Fun event to raise money for Prostate Cancer.

It was beautifully sunny in the Hotel grounds – I hope they had lots of visitors and raised lots of dosh for this important research.

Sarah’s husband Guy was having his [very hairy] legs waxed as part of the fund raising. I am not too good with watching people in pain, so we went home for lunch!

The meat was cooked [this nearly didn’t happen – having auto-timer very carefully, I was about to leave the kitchen and rush to church when I noticed the roasting tin still sitting on the worktop!]

After lunch a hospital visit to a friend, then I sat preparing

Holiday Club Crafts in front of the TV [catching up on stuff recorded weeks ago]

The evening service was stimulating – all about the Millennium in Revelation – are you pre-, post- or a- millennial?? And my friend Elizabeth is back from India for a few weeks which is wonderful! You have to admire anyone who spends 30 hours travelling then still turns up for the evening service.

Home for a lovely supper of strawberries, freshly picked from a friend’s garden.

Then bliss – time for bed and sleep, ready to get rested to face another week…

Hope you had a lovely, sunny weekend too…