Touching things. This is something I “touched on” with a blog post last year PB (pre-baby). And now, with freshly-gelled hands, we get to touch things in real shops again. For me, the most exciting shops to do this in are the secondhand shops, the charity shops, the antique and vintage shops.
Having a baby during the pandemic meant buying all of her stuff online; I didn’t get to touch any of it before it arrived at our door. This really bothered me for some reason. I like to feel clothing fabrics, and for my brand-spanking new baby this felt all the more important.
Over the last year we have all just been buying stuff we need. Reviews are read, online orders are placed, parcels dropped off. It’s all been very practical. Treats have come in the form of extra chocolate or booze in the shopping trolley. But this post is about the things we just happen upon. The curiosities, the pre-owned, the handmade.
To me, looking carefully at a secondhand item is like storytelling. The pencilled note a student has written to themselves in the throes of English revision “God this is so HARD”. The repairs to a countertop egg cupboard (yes this is a real thing we bought) with push pins. I can’t help my imagination running wild about the who’s and where’s and when’s.
I own a 1970s drum kit, and I love thinking about the different drummers who have sat behind it, the gigs it’s played, the smoky venues it’s seen.
We went to our first antiques shop in a long time this week. There was a human skull in there, with a bit of hair still attached. That was the only thing I didn’t want to know the backstory of.
Seeing as it’s May Day, the ultimate celebration of Spring, I though I’d share with you a music book I found in our local Oxfam bookshop. It conjures images of Summerisle, the isolated island that consumes Police Sergeant Howie in The Wicker Man. If he had visited the island at Beltane, perhaps these were the songs he would’ve heard the children sing...
How many song books for junior school start with an illustration of the ancient Runic Almanack these days?
The book is signed ‘A Jackman 1985’ in the front page. Presumably a teacher. I love thinking about a school performance of this, especially in 1985! It’s just so ominous, and I feel like people had less enthusiasm for ancient Rites by the mid-eighties?
The musical dynamics are also brilliant throughout. “Vigorously”, “Jauntily”, “Hectically”.
The full list of songs, and their customs of Spring.
The Labour government of 1978 introduced the spring bank holiday associated with May Day. Two subsequent Conservative governments have tried to scrap the bank holiday for these very associations, and replace it with a “United Kingdom Day”. So whatever you’re doing, be it dancing round a maypole ecstatically or lighting a fire to protect your cattle from fairies, raise a glass of dandelion wine to the return of touching things.