May Day

Not to be confused with 'M'aidez'   but when I was younger May Day used to be such an important day in the Workers' Calendar - there used to be marches by the Unions.   Now we rarely hear anything of the Unions at all.    My father, who took part in the General Strike in the late twenties and who spoke of it often during my thirties childhood, was a great Union man.   Now it has almost become a day like any other.

Joanne yesterday asked why I called my blog 'Weaver of Grass', so I thought I would tell you today.   I think I have told the story before a long time ago but here goes:

When I was thinking of starting a blog - many years ago - I couldn't think what to call myself.  We were still farming and I was still active  enough to walk with my farmer and t he dogs round the fields - in Summer moving the electric fence before letting the cows out after milking, in Winter just to  keep an eye on the sheep. But it is the evening walk that is relevant here.   We would set off about six o'clock in the Autumn - just as it was getting dusk and the sun was low.   Over the night and day small spiders would have woven their webs over the tops of the grass in the meadow and the setting sun would just catch these webs and they would glisten and the field would look so beautiful.   One evening the farmer said, as we approached the particular meadow where it always happened - 'I wonder if the weavers have been out ' - and I said -'that's it - that's the name for my blog!' and so it became.   Afterwards I found there was a book with the same name.    In the days when I wrote a bit of poetry I wrote a poem about them:

Weavers of Grass

 

In that bright hour

when the sun glows

with the promise of a rising sun,

when the air is cool and moist

and the dew lies heavy on the ground -

then come the weavers

threading their strands through the grass

so that at evening,

when the sun is low

it shines though the silken threads

and shimmers in the fading light

and makes a field of gossamer.

 

I'm not a brilliant poet but I did hope that my blog posts might 'shimmer in the fading light' - I didn't realise I would be fading for quite as long as I have been doing!! 

This morning, out for my morning 'constitutional', I met an elderly gentleman, walking with a stick.  We stopped to speak (his dog stopped too and flopped down on the grass, obviously used to his master stopping).   With no small talk  at all he said, 'How old are you, if you don't mind my asking?' - I asked how old he thought I was and he replied 'late seventies'.   When I told him I would be 89 in October he replied he was catching me up as he was 85.    At what age does one begin boasting about one's age I wonder!!