Getting warmed up…

Hello all, especially former Stonehenge Circus bandmates–

I’m afraid this might be one of those stories my wife Nancy has heard a hundred times, but she was kind enough to mention that the annual Summer Solstice invasion of the real Stonehenge by modern-day Druid Hippies has made the news.

I was traveling through England and Ireland in 1980 and didn’t pay much attention on the ferry from Dublin to Wales (my memory is hazy on where we actually landed) when the guy sitting next to me was leafing through a large book on Stonehenge and Druids.  Anyway, in the course of my travels I was supposed to visit some fun, interesting relatives in Cardiff and some dull, dull old relatives along the way who ran a little bed and breakfast now that their kids had left the nest.  They lived near Stonehenge (Salisbury maybe?) but insisted the old rocks were a bore and not worth wasting my time visiting.  But having played in a band named Stonehenge Circus, I felt a duty to pay my respects.  For a supposedly dull place, however, the train station was bustling when I got off.  I got chatting with a “family” walking over to a psychedelic taxi and when it turned out they were also headed for Stonehenge, I accepted their offer to share the ride.  Turned out they were modern Druids, and when I got there my eyes just about jumped out of their sockets.  The “cab” stopped in the midst of a gathering that would have given Woodstock a run for its money.  There were plenty of booths selling the usual hippy paraphernalia, but there were plenty more selling neat little packets of about every drug I had ever heard of and more than a few I had not.

And then I walked over to Stonehenge itself.  Normally cordoned off and protected by Bobbies, the ropes were down and the guards were taking a long coffee break.  Jungle drums were playing joyfully and like a scene from Hair, hundreds of neo-Druids were dancing wildly on TOP of the monoliths.  A few of the dancers were wearing feathers and ribbons, but that was about it.  There was a young American couple standing nearby, their jaws agape, trying to take a few pictures.  They were from Iowa, on their honeymoon.  And life in Sioux City was never going to be the same.

Happy Summer Solstice wherever you are!
(6/22/15)