Spring – Chris Collins

Rona Riot

While the world goes to shit, you can bet, as usual, that I’ve got an opinion on this too. My blog began as a way of keeping in touch with my friends back home to share my Australian adventures. Now it’s going to come into its own for my Australian friends too.

So we’re all consuming our life experience virtually just now. Some of us are in lockdown, glued to our telly, watching in horror as it all unfolds. Some of us are consuming a lot of… well, things that are well meaningly shared about but probably aren’t true. Just like when The Star tells you incredible northern blizzards are coming at the end of the week!!! and I’m wondering where they get this exciting information; the Met office has barely forecast drizzle, and that’s the definitive source! A useful analogy in these times. And then there are yet more of us who are using the time to binge watch tv and be entertained by more cat videos than ever.

Into the mix of all that, I throw in a little blog for amusement. It’s not like you’re going anywhere or have anything else you should be doing. This shit is happening for a good sixth months whether we deal with it well or not, so here’s my little contribution to trying to deal with it well.

So, I don’t wanna isolate some of the ol’ readership, but lots of my home chums have posted memes about 2020 being shite, and I wanna back up my adoptive home in a ‘Nam-like sorta way; ‘you don’t know man, you weren’t there!!’ First Australia had fires that destroyed huge swathes of landscape and loadsa those guys are still living in tents. Then we had so much smoke we couldn’t go outside, and asthmatics were always two breaths away from an attack. Then we had a positively biblical hail event in Canberra that destroyed things that still haven’t been fixed. Then there were floods. So it’s already been a crap start to 2020 after a shitty summer of fire, smoke, hail and flood, and now we have disease too. But yous all have just had the standard five month winter, so, yeah, that is bleak as well.

And now here we all are. Inside. Now, I am super lucky. Yup, we all want to read a blog about how good I’ve got it, sure. But attention must be paid to the things that are going to make it all alright for a bit. While my employment is totally drying up…balls… I have a lovely Yates. Public servant jobs are secured (for now) so our income is not stressful. We are in jolly good health. We have each other. There are lots of people right now with no jobs, whose homes are precarious, who may not have anywhere to self-isolate (like Win’s post about India), or who are struggling on benefits and can’t get enough food. Women and children, and men, in struggling households of violence. If life is at least not like that, then let’s look forward. Some of my own dearest artist friends, Kunal and Dorota, Ben, Charlotte and Dan, CJ, are looking at insecurity as the gig economy dries up. If you’re not like that, let’s look forward. And some of us who just live alone and may not see another person for months now. Let’s look forward.

I don’t want to preach about being positive. Even I keep punctuating my wafty blithe optimism with tantrums. It won’t all be over by May, so you can’t go to Japan, Chris. Pen jettisoned across the interview room. It won’t be over by July, so you can’t fly home and see your little nephew before he forgets what you look like. Little weepy on the drive to work. You can’t go to work Chris (oh. Oh, well, ok). You can’t sing shanty’s round your friend’s house. Scowl. Floriade has been cancelled. Honey lid launched across the kitchen, right, that is FUCKING IT!!! But between that, there is this:

Yates and Chris wake up at the luxurious time of 6.40 and amble into the living room. Leisurely, we drink a pot of tea, occasionally muttering ‘fuuuuck’ as we listen to the news. We watch the sun come up, and chuckle at the currawong who lands on the balcony wall and cocks its hesitant little head at us. We decide to go for a run or …something, then setting down industriously. We make faces at each other over the tops of our computers. We sally forth (er, sorry Europeans, for now, Aussies are still allowed out) to get a coffee and hot cross bun. We count that essential journey under ‘food,’ and while our favourite cafes, bars and eateries are selling food out a side hatch, we’d better keep them afloat. Cockatoos come and visit us throughout the afternoon, and, between fighting one of the cheeky buggers for a bra I left drying on the balcony, we make up office dramas about our cockie co-workers. Sometimes I tutor a child via skype and we make up poems by creating comparisons and pull out the most perspicacious metaphors you’ve ever heard. I write a poem, or something else. I will ring someone I love, and look at their face. Yates endlessly potters outside to feed the cockatoos and watches them in fascination. We cook dinner, and eat it on the balcony (while nine, yes, nine of the feathery fuckers watch us), watching the sun set behind Black Mountain with a glass of wine. Then on the sofa, we read a bit of Pratchett to each other, stare gormlessly at our phones a bit until one saves the other with a squawk of ‘loop!! You’re in the loop! Stop the loooop!!’ And so to bed.

There’s been a lot of discussion about mindfulness, meditation and …ya know, all that bollocks. But we’re sliding into winter, here in Canberra (exciting! I’m wearing tights!) and I am reminded of the great words of my best friend Becky. Winter is for rest. I thought about this a lot last winter here. And this is my main source of optimism. In isolation, we are forced to rest, to reflect. After a few days of isolation, we feel good, it’s great to stay indoors and not have to go to work. We chill out. Then after a few more days, we get fucken bored and gloomy. Without distraction, stuff comes out your head you didn’t know was there, then how the hell you put it back in. And then when we come out of that, we genuinely start finding things to DO.

In summer holidays gone by, if I wanted to write, I had to dedicate enough empty days in a row to actually get bored enough to just sit down and start. This is the time for us now to find these things to DO, to be creative. And as any self-respecting northern hemisphere-er knows, there is a marvellous luxury to be found in winter, of saying ‘no, ta!’ to the world, and snuggling inside, with cups of tea, with blankets, with beautiful music, with audio books, and enjoy the fact that we are warm and safe. Creatives are relishing this. The sitting in a candlelit room with red wine and Nick Cave, drawing (hi Dorota). Those of us sitting by a log burner with a cheeky whiskey, listening to owl calls and knitting (hi boaters). Snuggling on cushions and shoving the cat or dog away to listen to Terry Pratchett on audio books and draw, sketch, make quilts and cards, bags, knit socks and gloves, paint beautiful flowers on metal buckets (hi Freeman, Freeman’s mum, Lesley the boater, Jane’s bags; boater, Annie; boater, Lottie). Lying on your belly on the floor, leafing through six cookbooks at once, and thinking …oooh…that looks nice and spending afternoons roasting, baking and stewing (hey Brooke, Sinead, Danny). Removing the violin or melodeon, clarinet or guitar from The Slightly in the Way Stand of Good Intentions and playing, singing (that’s nearly everyone else I know from New Moon, Surly Griffin, Huginn and Munin, Red Cuthbert, Canberra/Redfern Shanty Club). Staring out the window or over the balcony wall, tapping your pen, thinking ‘what is that like?’ until you make your metaphors. Reading, and learning. No distractions. Many of us are lucky enough to enjoy this.

Can you imagine trying to explain the internet as a way of getting us through isolation to someone hiding out from the Black Death in the fourteenth century? I just can’t manage it. But we have it. My new good friend Jen said another interesting thing to me on that idea; seeing as we no longer see daily people, we have all our energy open to choose who we want to talk to. Now, it’s just as easy for me to facetime a Canberran Shanty Singer or Writer as it is my English teacher friends. Just spin through your address book and think, ‘who’ll it be today?’ We can reconnect with people because we have time. This is a beautiful thing. And while I want to take your jammr, your bandlab, your zoho, zoom, skype, webex, discord, houseparty, hangouts, messenger, whatsapp and ram them all where the fucken sun doesn’t shine, it was bloody awesome when my phone rang and suddenly five faces were looking at me all talking at once and suggesting we burst into ‘Randy Dandy Oh.’ Or when we cheekily gatecrashed Will and Jen’s facetime with Charlie and Lucy, because houseparty lets you do that. People are being creative at finding new ways to work, socialise, create and party. Best idea yet was Sinead suggesting we all facetime in together and get Danny to sommelier us through wines we all have. Genius.

As Monty’s already pointed out, normally this staying inside for two weeks in your jammas, playing board games and drinking is exactly what we’re all over at Christmas, so we have it in us. This is the approach I’m taking this winter.

Hippy dippy three-month duvet time aside, there are probably some other moments of peace we could find in all this. Our world is fast paced and connected, social media gives us forums to compare ourselves and there is always something we could or should be doing. I need more theatre in my life. Why? Erm, because knowing I’ve done something cultural makes me feel valid. I want to go to the pub with all the pretty lights and look like the pretty people. Why? Because then I’ll feel loved and like I’m having a good time. I should be further ahead in my job like that chick I just had dinner with. Why? You weren’t even thinking about that this morning. Because…feminism. I should have children before I can’t have children, and then I won’t even have the chance to think about whether I want children or not. I want that pretty dress so I can go out in it and then show off, post pictures, everyone must know how good my life is. And look, I’m not friends with loads of megaposters because… I find those behaviours tedious. Fuck, I stopped shaving my armpits sixth months BEFORE all this shit. But inside us….ok, inside me, there is a little bit of the pernicious comparing. Is my life successful enough? Interesting enough? Am I loved enough?

Well bitch, the whole world’s in a onesie and bunny slippers so there’s not much comparing to be done. Getting dressed is an achievement. There is now a Great Not Having To. No feeling bad about not having explored your country enough; you can’t for a bit. No feeling bad about not going out on the town to rock out; because you can’t. No feeling frustrated that you still didn’t try that fancy new restaurant only down the road and goddamit you’ve been here 11 months now, because you can’t for a bit. Freedom. Er, not laziness. All the background anxiety about promotion, direction, the world, the ex, forget it. A crisis reminds you what’s important. I enjoyed this on the boat. My concerns were about having sufficient water, enough fuel for warmth, enough space in the pot to shit in, and food. All other things are marvellous benefits. I don’t want to be glib about people who genuinely face real anxiety – and suggesting a pandemic will ‘liberate you from daily anxiety’ is pretty fucken hard to swallow, but it could certainly focus on what things are objectively worth anxiety, and what we have to be pleased about. And what about those of us who never liked going out much anyway? Happy days.

All well and good for us on The Great Underneath. Those of you fatigued by the grey of a long winter, itching in your feet as flowers press through the earth – you’re pretty much over the whole snuggle and the staying inside thing. If winter is rest, summer is action, for living, for doing, frantically, until winter again when you can sit down and think about it all. My attempt at comfort is this. Imagine what a spring it will be. Yellow hammers and skylarks will peep out of the hawthorn hedgerows with held breaths; they will wait and then…nothing. They will fly out, unmolested. Hedgehogs and badgers will approach the tarmac river and waddle slowly across it, unflattened. Carp and pike and bream will multiply unfished, hares will run, cow parsley, trefoil, then bluebells, garlic flower, rosebay will elbow their way out to the sun, trembling and shaking in the breeze unpicked; untrampled, and hawks will soar in skies unstained by smears of engine fuel. Mountjacks, mink, stoats will tumble on the towpaths and live a year without fear. Let them have it. Just this once. I’m sure we’ll re-seize the world after all this is over and carry on fucking it up without a second thought.

I feel close to my home, this time of year. Spring and Autumn are not two sides of a coin but parallel moments of change that line up equally at a point. The sun on yellow buttons here in the gentle autumn warmth is like the sun on cowslips as we dance up the summer. The weather fluctuates, and reminds us there is nothing you can rely on, but change. And we’re in a time of change. Incredible how quick that shit moved, hey. Two months ago, we all couldn’t do enough for firies, we fell over ourselves to donate, to flock to centres, to bring food, clothes and money to help each other. The human was united against Nature, the enemy out there that was pursuing us with its hot fingers. Now the enemy is within us, invisible; we don’t know if our friend we’re walking with is an asymptomatic carrier, or if the person at the checkout is, or if they guy you just walked past has all the bloody bog roll and that bitch has all the pasta, so we regard everyone with suspicion and hate; fight over basic amenities while scorning refugees who want to get off the boat here. Boy were we ever worried about the wrong boat. But in the time of social distancing, everyone, remember to smile and wave at people, in between walking away from them. It’s great for Brits, the naturally suspicious of the world, because a smile now CAN’T lead to further interaction you don’t want, it can be taken just as it is; a momentary connection of kindness. Don’t walk away from each other in your hearts. This is how we’ll rebel against the ‘rona. I’ve smiled at the same old fellow the last three mornings on my run, and today, he was ready; he looked me square in the eye, and said hello.

Made my fucken day.

What’s Up in Manjimup

I have been languishing under the virility of my first Australian cold which has left me the time (although less the acumen) to ponder on the hedonism that has led to this recent drop in immunity.

Following the onset of a glorious spring where all was right and glittering with the world, we went to Western Australia. People told me it was lovely; not least Helen Waterhouse who used to live and work there (shout out) but I was unprepared for how devastatingly different it was from here. Ya know, I shouldn’t have been; it’s a five hour flight so about the distance from Stansted to Istanbul (oh, is it different here?) but then there is also the ubiquitous eucalyptus that homogenises Australian landscapes to some extent. I was also unprepared for the sort of emotional connection I had. Bear with me.

I have grown up with the knowledge that ‘Grandma was born in Australia.’ But I have never mythologised this. I have never felt drawn by the intrepid adventure of my ancestors to follow their pioneering footsteps. In fact, I’d never have bloody come here if Yates hadn’t got the job. And I don’t think Perth was high on my list beyond bagging all the capitals.

‘Grandma was born in Australia and left when she was two. She lived in a place called Manjimup.’ I have always known these things like you learn your family’s birthdays and how they have their tea. But I did not romanticise them. However, we were thinking, well, New Zealand’s still cold in spring, so we’ll go to Perth and I might as well get to Manjimup – Canberra Conversations: there’s a great truffle and wine place down there so while I’m at it, let’s look up second cousin Laurie…

So I wrote to this chap mam had met years ago on her own Australian trip and he sent me a couple of pictures I’d seen before of my great grandparents. And bugger me, there they were, surrounded by eucalyptus trees (and not a lot else), grinning and squinting in the sunlight and suddenly a dry flash of lightening threaded through the years between them, turning up and thinking ‘faaack, it’s hot – and look at them trees!’ all new and hopeful; and me, doing just the same ninety years later. And it suddenly did make me feel connected to a woman I’d never met who I heard made great cakes, and an old man I barely remember who used to give Beck and me rides on his mobility scooter.

So misty eyed (and thoroughly grumpy – I do not recommend getting a Murray’s bus to Sydney at midnight to get a 7am flight, that’s a shit idea), we landed in Western Australia, hired a car and began hurtling south. If you look at Western Australia on a map, there’s (implausibly) a really really green bit. We drove through miles and miles of orchards. Banished was the brown red landscape with stones and scraggy grass – we drove past apple orchards, hazelnut orchards, pears, cherries, peaches…espaliers, olives…it was glorious. My eyes were fixed to the window drunk on green and wide open space. Pretty little towns celebrating their apples, had bright (and slightly tacky) apple shades on the streetlights, and consisted of nothing more than a row of shops (keeping to the traditional frontier chic – corrugated metal roofs, large verandas….yet still the tragic absence of saucy women in red petticoats) on one side of the street and some sort of memorial garden; and the all important loos, on the other, all surrounded by orchard. This may not be the place to slip into rhapsodies about Australia’s enlightened attitude to public conveniences with which the U.K. has thoroughly dispensed and still insists it has no money, despite the obvious fortunes recouped from their upkeep…but we’ll let that spasm pass.

Manjimup has a very grand entrance…comically so. The town itself did not inspire me terrifically, but the little outdoor museum was marvellous; merging play areas with picnic park space, event space, lakes and strolls with old buildings gathered from around the area and erected there to rest. Here I found the real actual police station (about a room and a half big) where my great uncle William was Chief of Police and thwarted a bank robbery back in the 30s. This enlivened that legendary story for me, which mam had brought back from Australia eight odd years ago.

We then headed to Pemberton, which I am told is actually where Grandma was born. There is a hospital there; didn’t look like the original building grandma was born in (although I’ve rather skipped over the existence of this modern convenience in a recent piece of fiction for dramatic effect) – and as my pop pop apparently had farmland, I assume their little homestead wotsit was a bit further out of that. ‘Pemby’ was even smaller. Again, row of shops on one side of the street; loos and memorial garden on the other. Streets of houses criss-crossing behind up the hill. We stayed in the Pemberton Hotel and I had a fabulous supper of locally cooked trout. Then bed at 8, as we’d pretty much been up 38 hours, and later woke to our first Western Australian morning.

WA doesn’t get behind daylight savings. Eastern Australians have strident opinions on this, but I kind of liked it at the time. It starts getting light around 04.30 (not dissimilar from the U.K. in June), so you wake up a little after that, all refreshed and adjusted because the sun’s been gently whispering in your eyelids for quite a while. And it’s 6am. So you get on with the day nice and early, and are back in bed before 21.00. I’d say that keeps the wholesome population of WA out of trouble! I awoke to the sound of a kookaburra gleefully ecstatic at the morning and sat on the balcony while it rained softly (rain!! Blessed rain! Imagine an Englishwoman welcoming rain!) to engender all that voluptuous verdance around us. Later we strolled down to the little tram; Pemby’s main tourist attraction, which takes you on an hour and a half little ride through the immense forest which it used to be instrumental to managing, and er, cutting down. We bloody loved it. The deal about that part of WA is its forest of giants; Karri trees (a type of eucalypt) are the third tallest trees in the world, after the American Redwood, and Mountain Ash (predominantly found in Victoria and Tasmania) and grow up to 95meters. Thus it was great to actually get in it, properly. This little tram was for transporting logs to Pemberton’s sawmill and forest had been cleared up to 40m either side of the track. Now in 2019, the forest has a fight with the passengers through the open sides of the tram. It was great, you’re brought up in the U.K. being told by headshaking, grieved looking men that you must never lean out the window of a train, followed by horrific legends of decapitation (to which the noxious verb ‘bounced’ is often applied) and here we just merrily leaned out and dodged branches. The forest was carpeted in beautiful flowers, tall bells that rise sort of like fresia or foxglove…dunno what they’re called though, in pink, white, dark pink, orange, and then purple tree hovea that has little flowers a little like bleeding heart, there was native wisteria and even some wattle still, in a softer cream yellow than that in the east. I was in Wordsworthian rhapsodies. You only had to stare at the sky patiently for a little while before great black Carnaby cockatoos flapped across the canopy, or green ring-necks flitted like powered leaves from branch to branch. We stopped at the cascades; a beautiful clear river tumbling over rocks, we admired the white blossoms on the thin leafed peppermint eucalypts, slowed down over perilously high and rickety looking bridges to admire river after river, trying to spot trout or marron in them, and the driver provided such a hysterical commentary that Yates and I laughed the whole way through. Oh it was the best thing ever. And it was great seeing that landscape – here, in this green, British/Irish like green and rain, where my great grandparents had lived, working that forest, struck by that landscape, perhaps with the same wonder as me. I hope so. I hope they loved it.

After that, we drove to the outskirts of Manjimup to the Truffle and Wine company, where we had a splendid lunch of poncey things like salmon mousse, cheese with truffle oil, prosciutto and so forth. Bought some truffle oil. Then whizzed north to Margaret River.

I loved this place too. Again, green as … fuck; cool, sea, hippy little shops, lovely birds, I ate more fish and we booked ourselves, at the expense of $115 each, onto a wine tour. This was bloody amazing, and worth every penny. For this sum, we were driven around all day to four different vineyards, a chocolate place, an Italian sauces place, a brewery, given lunch, tried about 35 different wines, did a fun little science thing of mixing cabernet with shiraz to make personalised blends for lunch, and got dropped off at a bar where we were given shots. Fecking amazing. We were on the fun bus with two Danish sisters, a couple from Switzerland, a couple from Sydney and another British couple. Who after 35 wines and a pallet of beer, still couldn’t crack a smile. Bloody hell. But everyone else was fascinating and wonderful and I dizzied around blurrily loving everything. Beautiful vineyards in green fields stretching off towards the sentinel wall of eucalypts, smiling ironically at this European imposition. But who doesn’t like wine, right?

Apparently I was hard work on the way home. I can neither confirm nor deny. The next day we drove to Perth and met second-cousin-once-removed, Laurie – grandson of the bank robbery thwarting policeman who was older brother to my great grandfather. And even though this sorta long lost relative thing is very much not Yates’ bag, and I didn’t really think it was mine either, I loved it. Cousin Laurie is an incredibly cheerful fellow, upbeat, feisty, full of jokes, and his wife Lorraine just the same. I felt faint shadows of regret that we didn’t grow up part of those lives. Again, would grandma have been as irrepressibly cheerful and open hearted as her cousins if she’d run around barefoot with rosellas in her eyes in a place where remoteness deregulates so many of the social rules of 1940s London? If she hadn’t come back? She was a great woman in a crisis – would the struggles presented by that landscape have developed her better? Well, they say the unpopularly irritable women accused of witchcraft in the old days were often suffering pain from what are now preventable afflictions, and grandma suffered arthritis all her life. Not that grandma was a witch. But I reckon the pain she lived with would corrupt a lesser woman to warped misery, never mind the capacity for the huge expanse of love she gave us as children. So I don’t know how differently grandma’s life would have turned out, but I did feel a marvellous and uncanny affinity with these people who shared genetic material with me; particularly as I have never met or knew any other members of grandma’s family.

Then we went to a fancy restaurant in the Nedlands suburb of Perth where we drank a fabulous bottle of SSB and I ate a Balmain bug. The next day we hit the beach at the amusingly named Cottesloe…got nuclear burned but at least England won the rugby. The last day we took the ferry to Rottnest to see the quokkas; look up pictures if you’ve never seen them; but Rottnest seems to base its whole tourism strategy on instagraming selfies with quokkas. And they’re little and cute and stupidly brazen, so when you arrive on the settlement, they’re everywhere. You’re not supposed to touch them as multiple signage instructs you, but sometimes they fair rub against your legs like cats trying to pick up crumbs. There were kids stroking them like puppies, and everyone shoving things in their faces; bits of food, leaves, cameras. So yeah nah, decided to just watch them from a respectful distance. But if you’re hovering by a bush, another family strolling by realises you must be looking at a quokka and come running up with their phones and there goes respectful distance.

So I’m looking forward to the first quokka-ravages-a-toddler story in the news.

Full list of recommendations: McHenry Hohnen cellar door (in Margaret River, Steve’s restaurant in Nedlands, Perth), Hay Shed Hill, Brookwood Estate, The Truffle and Wine Company Manjimup.

Beltane

He coughs oak leaves and stands up. He is taller than the forest. He is the forest and it is him. The antlers of a deer twist like branches out from his head – they run through his leaves and he is of them. He stretches towards the sun, his sapling sinews crackling and pulsing – life beats on thundering hooves and paws through the forest.

The sun rises red gold over the cowslips. The green man shakes out his yellow green coat and walks into the year.

As crocuses wither and daffodils droop, hawthorn blooms. Children from the village wearing flower crowns bring offerings to the stone circle on the hillside.

The green man stands forest vast in the centre and ribbons are tied to him, bells waved, and all the people dance. He is wreathed in tumbling badgers, cubs and singing birds. To him will come his queen, his Beltane Bride, the hawthorn queen. And they will fruit summer together.

* * * *

Maya was the loveliest girl in the village. The last winter snows cleared to reveal her body taller in the spring, her hair laburnum yellow and her bluebell eyes shone. This would be her first year to dance with the older girls for the Beltane festival.

She was ready for it. The spring had swelled in her breast over the April weeks as the weather gentled and she found she had not stopped smiling in a fortnight and went to bed with aching cheeks. Her mother would call her impatiently as she stood by the stream, gazing at the sunlight on its rushing ripples that hurt her eyes with their dazzle. On getting the sheep in, she would pause on the hillside and glut her eyes on the bluebell copse’s fragrance and the soft way hawthorn threw its white blossoms on the field edge. But most of all was that feeling in her breast, that swelling, alive feeling, of something beating that caught her throat and held her mind and made her stomach tickle. Like something was about to happen. Something incredibly beautiful and exciting.

This feeling called Maya from her bed before dawn. The silvery moonlight tapped on her eyelids and she unconsciously registered the change and woke up. She slithered out of bed and went to the window. As she struggled to lift the old sash, her sister stirred.

‘Maya, what are you doing?’

Maya winced and froze. ‘Sorry Freya. Go back to sleep love.’

Freya cleared her throat of bleariness and groggily sat up. ‘Are you trying to get out the window?’

‘No!’ Maya laughed. ‘Maybe, I’m not sure! It’s so lovely isn’t it? Everything’s silver, it feels magic.’

Freya stumbled over to the window and leaned on her sister’s shoulder, resting her arm round Maya’s waist. She stared a while, then rubbed her eyes with the back of her wrist.

‘Beautiful,’ she confirmed, turning around. ‘Now go back to bed.’

‘I’m going out,’ announced Maya.

Freya turned again. ‘Really? What if you fall in the stream? Or knock your ankle on something you can’t see? You’ll be no good in the morning for the sheep.’

‘It’s so light Freya – it’s like day! You can see everything! I’m going now.’

Freya was crawling back into bed. ‘Fine,’ she resigned. ‘But put some shoes on’

Maya runs into the horned silver night. She stops on the slope of the hill and looks down to the lake and forest and back up the hill towards her home. Her lips part in wonder as she sees the hills reflected ivory in the lake waters and her heart beats fast. She runs down to the forest.

The green man hears her coming and turns. Squirrels swarm down his arms and the buds on his brow flower into opulent green as he sees her run. A silver, hawthorn white girl. She stops, stunned, when she sees him, high as the green canopy above her. Tall, strong as summer, green as oak and beautiful. She goes to him. She is dazzled.

* * * *

‘Maya, really, that lamb was nearly left behind!’ her mother scolded. ‘You just stood there in a daze, then tranced down without even noticing her.’

Maya hung her head and mumbled her apologies, urging the lamb down the hillside with her crook under her mother’s thunder.

‘What’s the matter with you today?’ she continued. ‘You’re normally so alert. Did you not sleep well?’

‘Maybe that’s it,’ Maya admitted, stumbling on.

* * * *

The moon was suspended full and hovered swollen as if time stood still. That night it called Maya out to her green lover again and they stretched themselves out by the lake’s stream on its moss. His bark muscled arms crooked to cradle her, and his green finger leaves cushioned her sharp bones. When they kissed, the air was the fragrance of honey and hawthorn and the deep green freshness of moistened peridot moss.

He leaned toward the stream and scooped out a palmful of water. It wreathed itself into a silver ring and its patterns were the rushing currents and soft eddies of mountain streams, bound in silver threads of droplets and the shimmer of moonbeams. Displaying it to her first on a bed of leaves, the green man then slipped it on Maya’s finger.

* * * *

‘That’s pretty!’ Freya exclaimed, her eyes widening over breakfast. ‘Where did you get it?’

Maya came to herself again and followed her sister’s eye. She fiddled the ring idly, then covered it with her other hand and put both on her lap under the table.

‘I found it,’ she said, then cleared her hoarse voice. ‘By the lake.’

Freya’s eyes narrowed and she leaned in over her bread and honey. ‘Did you go out again last night?’

Maya chanced a quick glance over at their mother whose back was busily moving to the rhythm of the mangle in front, and nodded.

‘Well tonight it’s the green gathering,’ Freya whispered. ‘So I’ll be with you. You can show me where.’

Maya smiled. Freya pushed the last of her bread into her mouth and stood up, brushing crumbs off her skirt. ‘Doesn’t matter what we find – so long as you look as lovely as possible, little May queen!’

Under the moon before dawn, the sisters easily woke themselves. They cast aside the rough, course materials of their shepherdessing and dressed in Sunday-fine muslin. Laughing together and whispering, they left the house for the forest.

At the edge, they waited still and silent. Then a set of badger cubs came running across the worn path and carried on down the hill. Freya turned to Maya, eyes shining. Every year. The girls carried on to a good spot and began collecting ivy. They worked for a solid half an hour with their hunting knives, filling their baskets. Then anemones, bluebells, clover, cow parsley and early dog rose. Running home with it all, they heaved it upon the scrubbed table in the kitchen and Freya and her mother set about crowning their May queen.

* * * *

The green man waits as dawn reddens at the edge of the forest on the hillside. His wedding day. Song thrushes sing the bridal march and he watches the village bedecking windows, door jambs and children below. All the village and all the land to celebrate his marriage.

* * * *

Smiling Maya took her place behind two long columns of girls. They all wore white and had ribbons on their dresses and flowers wreathed in their hair. Freya turned and winked at Maya. Here we go. The drums started to set the rhythm, then the fiddles joined and all the girls as one began the processional dance up the hillside towards the stone circle.

The sun is so blinding bright in Maya’s eyes and she has only the impression through the ache, of green, green; blue in the sky and the dizzying whiteness of the dresses and the stones above, the dazzling grey-white of horses. It is all sensation, the warmth of the sun on her face and arms, the squeeze of the silver ring and the fluttering breathlessness in her chest. Her head is light and there are no thoughts now – they are diffusing out like pollen and mixing with the dew in the air and the wings of bees; and the scents of flowers drift in and mingle there. She feels herself slip and become the forest, the movement of ants, the grains of earth, the colours of smells, the very May itself.

They reach the stone circle. The girls stretch their arms into an arch while others scatter petals. Maya dances down the arch and enters the circle. She sees nothing now, but green and brown and the arms of her lover open, then enfold her deep to him. She dances into the heart of the oak.

In the stone circle, the village watch a girl and a tree, then a man and blossom, then in the confusion of the brilliant light and the sound of fiddles and birdsong and petals and cheers, all lifts and slips.

Then stepping back, the revellers see an oak tree, its leaves fragily small but irrepressibly green and ready, and the wind dandles the branches so there is almost a face of a man high up that comes and goes. There is no girl, but a beautiful white hawthorn bursting with white lace frothing flowers, and the branches of both are twined sweetly.

The children step forth and tie ribbons to oak and hawthorn and sing. And bees fly out in their ponderous progress and pollinate the blossoms and the flowers. Spring is for lovers.

The yearly offering.