My Plans For The Weekend

These days, weekends don't mean that much. Every day, excepting Monday and Thursday, is the weekend for me. Nevertheless, I have plans.

Tomorrow morning I plan to be awakened early by Roy, barking to get out. Realising it is Saturday I will get up at whatever ungodly hour it happens to be, pull on a pair of jeans over my pyjamas, stuff my feet into my gardening boots, wrap myself in a big coat and head to the garage for the Saturday Guardian.

On my return, I will start breakfast whilst perusing the magazine.

I will remove jeans, boots and jacket and return to bed with coffee and bits of the paper.

Sometime later I will get up, feed and water the chickens, drink more coffee, check the internet to make sure no celebrities have died in the previous 12 hours and drink more coffee etc. etc.

By now Bert will be up and aching to begin tiling the kitchen. I will have cleared it to aid him in his labours. To further help him, I will repair outside to sow vegetable seeds in the polytunnel.

At some point, I will return to the house, admire Bert's progress and if it is a fine day will work in the flower garden. And after that, I will simply potter about.

If visitors turn up and if they are at all politically minded I shall run my latest survey past them. Which is,

Name the worst Prime Ministers in your lifetime?

So far most people are saying May and Cameron.

On Sunday... oh, I haven't a clue about Sunday. I'll potter a bit. Maybe sow more seeds. Read. Take some photographs if it's fine. A walk?

First Day Of May

When I was a child the month of May was a period of special devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. At home our mother encouraged us to make a May Altar. I loved this. A deep window sill or table would be cleared and various holy statues, pictures and a crucifix would be placed and among this would be arranged wild flowers in vases and jam jars. We picked primroses, celandine, kingcups, daisies, dog violets anemones and bluebells. Most of these flowers soon wilted but they were easily replaced. I remember once bringing in May blossom but this was strongly discouraged as it was considered 'unlucky'.

I wouldn't have picked dandelions myself because they had a bad reputation and were supposed to make you pee the bed and bringing such a noxious weed to Our Lady's Altar would have shown a serious lack of respect. But daisies were a different matter. Those little Shippam's paste jars were just the right size for posies of violets or daisies. I remember being affronted when one of my aunts mocked us for having daisies on our May Altar. She called them weeds! I was shamed not to know this.

Shippam's Paste Jars

Having the May Altar in our house always made me feel extra holy and I said more prayers in May than I would in any other month. I was always sorry to see it cleared away when May was over but I think that Matty was relieved to be rid of the jars of wilting flowers.

Crataegus, hawthorn, may blossom

When I asked her why May blossom was unlucky and she said it was because it shed its petals so quickly that it made a big mess. I knew she was palming me off. Maybe she did not want to tell me the truth, which was, that hawthorn in the home was associated with death, or worse still, 'unregulated love.' And of course, for a good Catholic, the thought of death might be acceptable but unregulated love? Unthinkable.