So that’s why they prefer gowns

AS a member of Wrekin District Pagan Austin Allegro Owners club – there’s a sticker in the back of my Vanden Plas which proclaims “I heart wych elm” – I celebrated last Friday’s Blood Moon by sacrificing a chicken.

Next year, I’ll defrost the bird first. It was a swine trying to drive a ceremonial dagger through its breast.

My wife, a fellow Pagan, did not partake. As a cook who is more cordon noir than cardon bleu, she sacrifices meals on a regular basis, in any case.

Sadly, I was unable to attend the dusk Druid gathering at Castle Ring, Staffordshire – a deeply spiritual Iron Age fort that’s also popular with doggers – because, as a Cancerian, Venus had entered my star chart and was aligned with the Red Planet.

I would’ve brought an inordinate amount of negative energy to the party.

Also, Wolves were playing a friendly.

For those who missed the rare celestial event, last week saw a lunar eclipse which created an orange-hued Blood Moon, visible above our skies at around 9pm.

In truth, it wasn’t. Thousands were treated to the spectacle of a dull glow, akin to a traffic light in fog. Cloud cover marred the views of a heavenly display that some believed heralded Armageddon. Without jumping the gun, it appears they got that wrong.

But never mind, it’s not the end of the world.

It was, however, for drinking companion Colin. He told me he’d have sex with “anything that moved” if this planet had only hours left of its lifespan. “What would you do?” he asked. Stay very still. The lunar let-down didn’t stop a large number of disappointed stargazers pointing their cameras to the heavens and announcing: “Bugger it, I’m going to send a photo to the Sunday Mercury, anyway.”

The result was a shed-load of blurry images pinged proudly to the paper’s in-box.

A couple, devoid of any background, look like headlamps in drizzle.

It may be down to the Blood Moon, but people have snapped the planet as if it’s something new and unexplained. I now eagerly await an email announcing: “I was walking through Wolverhampton this afternoon, looked up and there was this big, silver glowing thing in the sky. Did anyone else spot it?”

It is not the first time I’ve been short-changed by God. The Blue Moon of 2015 promised the spectacular, but delivered a damp squib.

I, like everyone else, expected the thing to be blue. It was not and was never supposed to be. The wasted night provided Yours Truly with only one surprise.

A neighbour pointed his binoculars at the inky blackness, turned to me and whispered: “The frosted glass in your bathroom doesn’t work.”

The let-downs have not dimmed my enthusiasm for astronomy and astrology. I’ve been fascinated by the stars from a very early age.

I can remember dad showing me The Plough. It seemed a nice pub, but I had to wait in the Cortina with a bag of cheese and onion crisps and a bottle of Vimto.

I devour anything of an astronomical bent. News that an asteroid travel- ling within 20,000 miles of Earth’s atmosphere failed to ruffle Yours Truly, even though that’s closer than my wife gets to the kerb when parking.

Paganism attracted me after I studied the ancient Celtic tribes who practised the art. They were naked, smeared in blue woad and had appalling table manners.

As a religion, I felt it would make weddings interesting.

Those who danced while the sun emerged over the ancient rocks were a strange mix of the mystic and mundane. A gent from Yorkshire said: “Piggin’ oil light came on at Oxford. These Taiwanese wands are useless.”

Devotees know that a large, ancient site such as Stonehenge, which charged £15 for parking this solstice, is not needed to see-in this crucial period in the calendar. Any ring of stones will do. It is the same for Blood Moons. With the clock ticking to eclipse time, I simply placed a circle of pebbles on the carpet and danced naked around them while offering a dead goat to Roman deity Mithras. The HR department at my company want to speak to me urgently, and not just because joss sticks set off the sprinkler alarm.

They want to know what I did with the goat. It’s safe, it’s in my desk.

I’m indebted to our sister newspaper the Birmingham Mail for explaining what the summer solstice actually is: “It is the transition points between the seasons. It occurs when the Earth is at maximum tilt towards the sun.”

This gives us the longest period of sunlight, not the longest day, as the media insists on incorrectly reporting. They didn’t bung a couple of extra hours onto June 21.

I’m just as indebted to the Metro newspaper for providing an 11-point guide on what to do at the solstice, provided by “friendly Druid” the Bard of Ely, aka Steve Andrews, a man who has a green beard.

Tip five states: “St John’s Wort is nature’s answer to Prozac, but make sure you take expert advice beforehand to avoid overdosage.”

According to Wikipedia, St John’s Wort can cause dizziness, nausea and diarrhoea. Perhaps the latter is why Druids prefer gowns to trousers.