Saturday 21st June – 3.42am British Summer Time

Well, there it was. The brief blink of the Universe when midsummer tiptoes in and shuffles about the curtains while we’re all still drooling into our pillows. 3.42am. British Summer Time. The exact moment when the night gives up and the sun begins its long, triumphant saunter across the sky, turning sleepy sheep golden and making the dew on the allotments glint like a promise.

I was awake for it, of course. Not through intent or druidic discipline, but because my knee had locked into a shape best described as “surprised L,” and I remembered with a jolt of horror that I’d left half a pork pie unwrapped beside the bed. No one wants to find ants in their pants at this stage of life- especially if they’ve come up for pie.

But once up, there was no going back. The air had a charge to it – not stormy, just present, like something ancient was exhaling through the hedgerows. I made a mug of tea (teabag waved near the cup, not steeped - I like to be able to see through it to the other side of my thoughts) and sat in the potting shed, door creaked open, knees blanket-wrapped, just watching.

The light was soft and blue-grey, like something made from the dust of old robin’s eggs. Down the lane, mist was folding itself into tidy layers across the fields. Something scuttled. Something hooted. Something giggled, but I think that was one of the Allweather Twins, who sleepwalk. I sat in the potting shed with my mug of weak tea (the strength of an indecisive ghost) and watched the creeping bloom of light behind the trees. A fox appeared in the lane, looked at me as if I’d interrupted a soliloquy, and then disappeared back into the brambles.

Now, I know there are folk who say all this solstice stuff is claptrap - hippies and druids and types who keep yoghurt in kilner jars - but I’ve always had a soft spot for it. You see, back in the early seventies, I spent more than a few summer mornings up at The Stones – our local ceremonial stone circle, ancient as sin and twice as inconvenient to get to. You had to pass through two nettle thickets, a boggy patch known locally as “the coughin’ hole,” and an alarming number of moths the size of brooches.

Every midsummer, we’d gather at dawn, a rag-tag assemblage of eccentrics, self-taught astronomers, flute enthusiasts, and the Reverend Peplow (who came every year to make sure no one took their trousers off). I wore a robe one year – borrowed from the Lost Property at the railway station, which lent a faint whiff of hot Bovril to the whole occasion – and was crowned “Oblique Observer of the Eastern Nib.” A title that sounds more important than it was.

Now before anyone starts imagining bacchanals and ritual frolics, I’ll be clear - I never once got involved in the naughtier aspects of druidism. No midnight woading, no suspicious circles of hummus, and absolutely no fertility rites. I was more in charge of sandwiches, weather commentary, and keeping an eye on young Kevin Gubbins, who had a tendency to chant backwards and once summoned three foxes and an angry bee.

Those were strange, beautiful mornings. The kind of memories that feel both immensely real and faintly imagined. Like dreams caught in soup.

British Summer Time itself has always confused me. Keith once tried to explain it using a diagram and an app, but I became distracted by a mysterious bean in my cardigan pocket and the fact that the diagram appeared to include a goat. Still, there’s something rather comforting in the idea of all the clocks in the land agreeing to lie in unison. A coordinated fib for the greater good.

There is an old belief - whispered, not taught- that if you are awake to witness the precise moment of midsummer dawn, your hopes will travel faster, speak louder, and echo longer across the invisible veins of the world. I don’t know about that. I just thought kind thoughts about the people I care about, and left the rest to whatever listens.

If you’re asleep as this message finds you, I hope you’re warm and drifting on the soft butter of dreams. If you, like me, are awake - because of knees, thoughts, or simply the call of the season - I hope you find some quiet magic in the stillness.

The fox has returned and is now watching me with the expression of someone who knows how it ends. I shall go and wrap the pork pie now. It’s a precious time of year and we mustn’t take anything for granted - not even pastry.

Yours liminally,
Virgil Twobyfour
(Oblique Observer of the Eastern Nib, retired. Time-enthusiast. Shed-dweller.)

P.S. Apparently, according to Keith's digital forcastinator, today is also Worl Yoga Day and International Juggling Day. Make of that what you will. I, personally, will make another cup of tea.