Johan's Sacred Grove : Beltane

Here in Oxford, England (I've been back for a week, now) we celebrate Beltane the old way, 
all right...bonfires, all night revelry, including lots of drunkenness and sex; if you 
can't get laid on May Eve you can't get laid at all. Kinda like...well anyway, this 
culminates in a vigil at Magdalen College bell tower just before dawn, when a choir of 
schoolboys chants anthems to the dawn and the bells ring out loud and clear to herald
the summer. Various drunken people jump off Magdalen Bridge in white tie, often risking 
their necks (it's an eighteen foot jump into a river that usually crests at four feet) 
only to get arrested shortly thereafter...but it looks great on the front page. Women from 
St Hilda's (the ladies college) often jump topless. Very amusing. Afterwards, all ten 
thousand or so students troop back to their colleges or to various pubs for a lavish
champagne breakfast, then sleep in the rest of the day if they don't have essays due.

But summer? Oh no, I beg to differ. That's what got me laughing hysterically. It's usually 
about forty degrees, give or take about five degrees; sometimes there's even frost if we're 
having an exceptionally chilly spring. "Warm" means seventy degrees, and we're lucky if we 
have that in early May. (April is the cruellest month.) Of course, maybe El Nino just messed 
things up again this year. It certainly gave us a flood; the Cherwell was so high and 
turgid this year that the police divers could not go in and clear the bottom of the river 
of its litter of broken bottles, used syringes, etc, and so the bridge had to be closed 
off for the first time in history.  Scandalous!