The summer solstice
Written 21st June 2025
Happy midsummer day to you all.
Here's a pic of Stonehenge this morning as you probably weren't up at 4.30am.
Kind of cool eh? To see the almost prehistoric stones poking out above the masses of people.
I wonder if when the stones were put there, (now thought to have been built over 1500 years - construction ending approximately 1500BC, that's 3500ish years ago) that many people visited it on mid summers day? How would they have spread the word? How would people have known what the date was back then? You aren't getting very far very fast if you're just walking or on a horse so would lots of people have amassed?
Oh life is a magical mystery if you think about its history with humans.
And now I can't remember what I was going to write about.... d'oh!!!
Oh yes, the summer solstice. The longest day of the year in the Northern hemisphere. Hoorah! Who doesn't love summer? And why does it go so fast compared to winter?
An opportunity to take stock of nature. Our existence on a big ball in space. To be grateful for the sun, its energy and warmth, the human capacity for exploration and creativity and our desire to challenge and improve our situation. People are amazing and unique and wonderful. We should all try to be more tolerant and kind to others, respect our planet, our world, our children's world, and their children's world and so on and so on.
Surely today is a day to be in awe if you needed a reminder.
Our planet turns like clockwork, it orbits our sun without any issues, lag, delays, staffing problems, stopping, needing a new licence, repair costs, cleaning.... It's incredible if you think about it. Billions of years in motion without issue. And you can't say that about many man made things!
So lets try to remember to love it and leave it as we found it. Operational and usable for the next generations.
And now I have Richard Burton in my head with his opening lines from Jeff Wayne's 'War of the worlds'.
'No one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that human affairs were being watched from the timeless worlds of space. No one could have dreamed we were being scrutinized, as someone with a microscope studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. Few men even considered the possibility of life on other planets and yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this Earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely, they drew their plans against us.'
I get goose-bumps just reading that.
That musical was released in the 1970s.
I wonder what the lines would read if it was about the 2020s?
No one would have believed, in the first quarter of the twenty first century, that human affairs were being watched from the timeless worlds of space. No one could have dreamed we were being scrutinized, as someone with a microscope studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. Few men even considered the possibility of life on other planets and yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this Earth as a non viable entity and slowly and surely, they moved on to the next planet'.
Remember it's a privilege to be alive and live here so please look after our planet!!
LFx
