I hope you had a good May bank holiday – the weather was pretty good, in patches. The tree is in sunshine for the first time! I thought you might like the close-ups of the blossom now that spring has arrived. But the petals covering the grass and the path confirm that rough winds had indeed been shaking the darling buds; these pictures were taken on Sunday, after a very stormy night.

I work at night as some of you might know, and at 3.00 a.m. on Sunday morning I was treated to a very spectacular electrical storm – forked lightning travelling horizontally from one side of the sky to the other. Sheet lightning played constantly, flashing away like some sort of cosmic paparazzi, with the forked lightning suddenly supplementing the flashes and producing instant daylight as it crossed the sky. The thunder was rolling and crashing, but the odd thing was that though it was directly overhead, it was muted, in a way. It was as if it was all happening a very long way up, so perhaps it was. I don’t know a lot about meteorology.

Then, after about half an hour of this, the rain came. George (my cat – see his own page if you’re into cats) had been quite happy with the thunder and lightning, but he didn’t like the rain, which sounded as if it would bring the conservatory roof down. I had the TV on, and had to give up, because I couldn’t hear a word anyone was saying. Now I know that some of you reading this will have experienced much wilder and woollier weather than Britain produces, but I had never seen a storm like it, or one that went on as long. It was like being in a bad melodrama.

My apologies to the March competition winners who, despite what it said in this letter, still haven’t heard from me as I write this – the best laid schemes, and all that! But I’ll be letting them and the April winners know very shortly, and I’ll send both months’ prizes out shortly after that.

And to the anonymous visitor who completed a query form – the British do call a truck a lorry, with a ‘y’. Your spelling is wrong. Trust me, I’m British.

May facts? I’ve always understood it to be regarded as an unlucky month, but Brewer’s Phrase and Fable only has it as unlucky for weddings, which was a Roman superstition, apparently. And I couldn’t find anything about it being unlucky to bring may blossom into the house, but I grew up with that one as well. And this May has a Friday the 13th for good measure!

The 1st of May is of course May Day, and I would modestly refer you to Unlucky for Some, my most recent novel, if you want the low-down on a traditional English May Day. Most of them, are, however, a little less fraught than the one depicted therein. But Morris dancing – that quintessentially English tradition – was in fact brought here from Spain in the fourteenth century. The name ‘Morris’ is a corruption of ‘Moorish’.

The 5th of May brings the General Election, which I won’t dwell on.

And, at the end of May, we get another bank holiday.

And did you know that in any calendar year, no month starts on the same day as May? No – I didn’t either, but Wikipedia says so, so it must be true.

The Bee Gees took ‘The 1st of May’ to No 6 in the UK charts, but apart from that I can’t think of any other pop songs. Loads of folk songs, of course, and too many poets have mentioned it for me to begin to quote them!

Have a nice May!

Love,

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