This video brings together so many things I don’t know how to categorise it….

It’s the all-time uplifting Bring ‘Em All In by Mike Scott, performed by the brilliant Flaming Nora and the full-on festival spirit of Greenbelt 2012 in a ceremony devised by my sister Tess Ward.

Thanks Duncan MaClarens for making it.

Now where does it belong? Poetry? Prayer? Community? Philosophy? Digital?

I’m going to put it in motherhood because I was standing in white next to my sister. Her daughter was beside her and her husband was behind us and my son was in front of us and my God-families were around us and because there was a sense of family that was bigger than all of that.

Bring ‘Em All In….

“They don’t ask ‘Have you had a good autumn?’ Or ‘Have you had a good spring?'”  I would mutter as I sat at my desk working all through July and August.  “What is this ‘summer’ thing?”

But that was before I had a little boy. That was before early September brought the ritual of  ironing name-tapes into sweat-shirts and getting feet measured for Jack Nano shoes.

This week, as I get the grey trousers down from the loft and hunt in the back of the cupboard for Tupperware,  I am amazed that despite working for four of the past six weeks, they have felt relaxed simply because days haven’t been truncated by 8.55am and 3.30pm deadlines.

Oh the things we have done!

Oh the things we have done! We’ve been to Barbados, been to cricket school, been to three festivals and to the Paralympic Games.

We’ve made bread, made birds of paradise, made new friends and made-up songs,  stories and and jokes (don’t ask).

We’ve paddled in pools, swam in a river and bobbed in the waves of the Caribbean Sea.

We’ve travelled by plane, by tube, by train, by bike, by taxi, by bus and by campervan singing along to Supertramp at the top of our voices.

We’ve laughed, we’ve danced, we’ve sung, we’ve cheered, we’ve Mexican-waved – and we’ve got very, very muddy.

Six glorious weeks

They have been six glorious weeks in which we’ve stretched and flexed and doodled and meandered, got lost and re-united, discovered and re-discovered.

Arch and I have called it “adventuring”.  “Where shall we adventure to today?” we would say as we set off on another school-free day.

Another name for it is “summer.”  I get it now.

And there was me thinking I was giving it to Arch. In fact he was giving it to me.

1) The knowledge that the reservoirs have been re-stocked and the ground is rich and moist makes me feel safe and replete.

2) In the fleeting moments when the sun DOES shine, the grass is all the more verdant, the colours deliciously intense.

3) I can’t run at the moment because – seven months on – I’m still recovering from an injury.  The rain makes this a tiny bit less frustrating.

4) Due to that same running injury, there is only one pair of shoes I can wear at this point in time – and those shoes require socks. I’m glad it’s chilly.

5) I had vowed to make progress in my garden this summer but – as ever – haven’t had time. I feel all this rain kinda lets me off that one.

6) Sports Day was cancelled.

7) I am at a stage in life when I feel sad and full of grief.  The rain has made me feel that the world is weeping with me.

Image on blog menu page @Skippy3E

Don’t get me wrong, I love summer evenings – sitting with friends as the barbeque cools and the scents of the impending darkness fill the air, calling the children in from the far ends of the camp site as it approaches ten o’clock, coming home all nice ‘n’ lazy because it’s light and it will stay that way for – oooh – hours and hours. I luxuriate in the ease of summer.

But there’s another side (should I say a shadow side?) to the gloriously long evenings of June.

Why I feel relief at the summer solstice

What about the times when I’m tired or sad and all I want is to get home, have a bath and get into my pyjamas?  It’s just not the same doing that in daylight.

What about the moments when I long to create a womb-like space in which to curl up, light a candle and pray?  I need to do that all the year round but in summer there is often a dissonance between the callings of my inner world and the long, glaring hours of light.

I’m not complaining. One of the many things I enjoy about living in England is its climate and the contrast between its winter nights and summer days.

But as the year is poised on this, the summer solstice, I salute and welcome the start of the hemisphere’s descent into darkness,  just as, in six months’ time, I will welcome its ascent into light.