May Day

by Margaret Watson

May Day is always celebrated on the first Monday in May, which means that this year it will be Monday May 5th.

In my Shropshire school they had a Maypole. It is probably long gone, to make way for netball courts or climbing frames which can be used every day, but then it was only a once-a-year experience. Someone would climb up and attach ribbons in various colours to the circle at the top.  A little girl then held on to her ribbon and danced in an intricate pattern so that the ribbons crissed and crossed to form diamonds of colour. Well, that was the theory, but we were very young, totally under-rehearsed and the result was chaos, and one child nearly getting strangled in pink ribbon – but at least we enjoyed ourselves. I wonder if they ever got the ribbons untangled.