Rain on the Longest Day

Warm lazy rain on the summer solstice, the shortest night and the longest day, a turning point. From tonight the evenings will start 'drawing in' - delightful phrase, as if light moves like heavy curtains - until the winter solstice in December, when the nights start shortening again.  But for our friends in New Zealand today marks the opposite point, as from tonight their nights will start shortening again.  A sleepy, invisible, ever-changing pattern of light-fall across a whole planet.  So the earth turns.  

Pictures on the Guardian website from Stonehenge this morning, as hippies and druids and ravers gathered (inside a tight police cordon) to watch the sun come up through the stones.  They towered above the crowds, soft-lit like the temples at Karnak against a dark blue pre-dawn sky, these massive stones older than recorded time.  Too many people for it to be truly spiritual, was the mood here.  But an amazing thing nevertheless.