Thursday, May 28, 2009

How could I be so remiss?




I only realized this morning (which by the way, had the color PINK in it, which of course, made it a good day right off, even if it only lasted five minutes) that I'd forgotten about one of my favorite British spring celebrations.


May is full of weird British Spring celebrations, really. Many of them involve morris dancing

(I was going to have a video here, but truthfully, 2 minutes of Morris dancing was more than I could take...if you're really interested, go to youtube.com and put morris dancing in the search box..there are more videos than you can shake a stick at - that's a morris dance joke)

or dressing a guy in green and parading him through town for the Jack in the Green festival



and lots of other Celtic Spring influenced happenings. But my personal favorite is the cheese rolling festival. There is more than one (I'd be at the Stilton cheese rolling myself, with the prize being a wheel of Stilton and a bottle of port), but the Gloucestershire festival seems to be the big one every year. What is a cheese rolling, you might ask? And why don't we on Culebra have, say, a tostone rolling? I can only answer the former, with this visual. As to the second, frankly, I'd need a better prize than a giant tostone...I wonder if lobsters roll?



Now, why people endanger life and limb for a wheel of cheese is one of those life mysteries it is better not to spend much time pondering. But apparently it's loads of fun, as I rarely think of Brits guffawing en masse (at least they don't while not with their own kind on home turf, it seems...well, except for Karen...and Paul...and...hmm, maybe it's NOT true! I'll have to get a small wheel of cheese and toss it for them to see what happens - in fact my mental image of Karen and Blond Paul careening down Ann's hill after a wheel of cheese will keep me grinning most of the day - oh! & welcome home, Karen!).

Anyway, the event was a few days ago but we're on island time so that's close enough for me...and for you too.

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