New calendar

Remember Ember Days ? Quarter days and the hiring fairs ? Remember Michaelmas (Apart from the daisies)?

No ?

No. We have a few empty festivals left. Sparkly Christmas and the altar of commerce, and Easter where chocolate eggs are, thankfully, more significant than the atavistic human sacrifice at the unacceptable heart of the churches' celebrations.

Instead ?

Have no fear. We have anew calendar taking shape around us like a coalescing star. There are annual rituals and as yest unnamed festivals. Here are a few. All offers for more gratefully received.

Spring

Icy roads and Running Out of Rock Salt Day. Followed by flash-flood week and aerial shots of stranded cattle and householders being rescued in rowing boats.

Summer

Exam day. Grinning girls celebrate straight As in every newspaper. Teachers bemoan marking and the government, ably assisted by the media, talk of falling standards and how exams are not what they were, as they simply do not fail enough candidates.

Autumn

Breath-taking synchronised price hikes from all energy companies leave inflation out of sight. They explain that they have sold themselves power at wholesale prices which are way too high, and have to pass on the rises to consumers.

Annual discussion of the imminent collapse of the NHS under the sheer weight of freezing pensioners who have been unable to get flu vaccine.

Winter

As Christmas begins around October not much space remains for new thinking.

Movable annual feasts

Politicians claiming for stuff the public has to pay for themselves: heating, travel, homes. You name it, there will be a scandal about it for three nano-seconds before it slips into the amnesia of kind history.

Announcement that politicians have to make 'tough choices'. Take cover when you hear this. It's never good news.

Come on... any offers for the new calendar ?