Happy Mayday
WENVOE FORUM
Considering Tomorrow Today
HAPPY MAYDAY
This time of year does seem to be a time for looking forward. Spring, in this part of the world, is definitely here; the trees are well greened up , plants poking their heads up and I am pleased to say the hops in my garden have started their vigorous growth and are looking good and worth a photo even if you can’t see the bright green leaves and dramatic red stalks. It’s a time of year when most days I go out and “persuade” them to wind themselves around the hop twine so that they grow where I want them to, not where they want to go. Fortunately, once they’ve got the idea it’s not a daily task. Sian tells me we now have 17 hop growers in the village signed up to giving their hops to make the beer known as Taff Temptress; the 2024 brew was exceptionally fine. So here we are again looking forward.
In the Islands of Britain, Mayday or Calan Mai or Beltane was the marking of life becoming a little easier for a while. The cows for example were turned out to graze with less work for the farmer. It is a time of traditional celebrations, many of which are now sadly disappearing. You may still come across a Morris Side, who dance in the dawn of Mayday, beer in hand, if you happen to be up and about at 5am! More seldom still do you come across a May Queen or children dancing round the maypole on a sunny afternoon. However as old traditions fade new ones arise and we look forward to the Tuckers Plant Sale. This year it’s a special VE day celebration marking 80 years since Victory in Europe and the thankful celebrations and hope for a peaceful future.
It has always been the Wenvoe Forum’s ambition to get the community to think about the future and the impact that each of our actions has on the future. We have been involved in a few initiatives that have tried to get people thinking and we have supported others to take positive action and run a few small projects and activities ourselves. What we have been less successful in is drawing new members and new voices into the forum. We hope to address that now with a new little project “Wenvoe Wonderings” (or maybe we’ll find a better name). This is to be a podcast of Wenvoe voices. The idea is to hear from people of all sorts chatting about matters of interest or importance to them. One of the farmers might talk about the changes they have seen over the last 30 years and the plans for future change. A recently arrived family might talk about the difficulties of starting a new school. Longstanding residents who no longer live in the village might let us know what they feel they have lost and gained from moving elsewhere. Each podcast would be 20-25 minutes.
If you would like to help with creating the PodCast, learn about informal interviewing, recording and editing sound files, and especially if you already have those skills, please let us know e.mail gwenfo.forum@gmail.com. OR if you have something you would like to say to everyone else in the village then similarly, please e-mail. I look forward to hearing from you
To join our Facebook group, please ‘friend up’ with the GwenFo account @ https://www.facebook.com/gwen.fo.1 and then jon the Wenvoe Forum @ https://www.facebook.com/groups/635369267864402
Some further information and updates, blog site https://wenvoeforum.wordpress.com/. Any Wenvoe community member is welcome to join the Forum meetings, via Zoom, which are normally held 19.00 on the second Thursday of each month. E-mail gwen-fo.forum@gmail.com if you wish to join