It is Midsummers eve. The evening before the longest day in the northern hemisphere.  

The night of Titania and Oberon. And the naughty Robin Goodfellow, known to his friends as Puck. who squeezed fairy dust into lovers eyes which caused them to fall in love with the first thing they saw on awakening.

I was a big fan of Thomas Hardy growing up. I was very fearful for his heroines. In "Far from the madding Crowd" I wanted Bathsheba to settle down with Gabriel Oak the minute I smelled the whiff of a red uniform. In "The Woodlanders", all the unmarried women in the village run down to the local pond on Midsummer's Eve and look into the water. Behind their shoulder, they would see the face of the man they would marry. 

I like those astronomical tilts in our planetary system. Equinoxes, when all things are equal. Solstices, when things tumble forward or backwards.  

If you believe in fairies, or warm winds of promise, or shooting stars bringing answers; midsummer's eve is the night.

So this evening I went down to the edge of the ocean. There were people going in to swim or packing up after a day on the sand. I must have looked like a painter without an easel. I was wearing baggy pink and white striped shorts. I had a straw hat that tumbled around my face. I had paper and a pencil. 

I didn't write big questions.  But I wrote a few smaller ones.

I wrote a lot of names. People who I want to remember before I go to sleep at night. People I want to make sure I see because they don't live near me. People, who live near me, whom I want to make sure I remember to see. 

And a few things that only Titania would understand.

To finish what I start. To learn new things. To be ready to move in a moment. To find love wherever I am.

Then I took my paper and I slid it into the water Away it went. The words disappearing with every squirl of the waves. 

Over to you, Robin Goodfellow.