Writing: ‘May Day Interrupted’
To mark May Day this year I undertook a one-day project walking around my part of South London. Streatham Common and the Rookery are my closest green spaces, and I have been visiting them daily for exercise under lockdown. They have become almost ritual spaces for me.
For this project, published in a lightly fictionalised form in the Mechanics Institute Review, I wanted to capture the weird sense of paused or interrupted time in spring 2020 by exploring some of the rituals that have been suspended: May parades, Jack-in-the Green Ceremonies, etc. I thought that a good way to do this would be by staging my own mini-ritual, conducted somewhat clandestinely one morning in May…
I’m pleased with the way that this piece turned out. You can read it online here:
Dr Michael Eades 