Nature's dance

I blogged recently in praise of blackthorn but, of course, that's the prelude and it's with the hawthorn and horse chestnut blooming now that the year's floral symphony reaches full volume. I think it's the best time of year for driving around the country, with the fresh lime green leaves on the trees looking gorgeous. But, if you had to describe mother nature's "show" as a dance, which one would it be?

Well, my favourite musician/poet Roy Harper has thought about this for us, in a lyric I also mentioned in passing but which I didn't really get for several decades: "buying rides on Mother Nature's funny belly dance".  But when I gave this some thought a while back, the penny started to drop.

I guess the obvious choice of dance analogy might be the salsa - as Len Goodman says, it's got a bit of everything. But does even a saucy salsa convey nature's range - from a glorious sunny day and sunset, to a crisp frost, a blanket of snow, a hailstorm, a tornado, an earthquake, a volcano, a tsunami? Even a salsa is far too tame. And Nature's show is a solo dance, no partner needed.

A pole dance? Saucy, yes but it doesn't really convey the range from a coy woodland glade to the eye popping display of wild thistles with beautiful spiky blue flower heads I've just seen. The more I think of it, belly dance is spot on: get an eyeful of this! And funny in the sense of peculiarly extraordinary. Some ride, some dance.

The line comes from one of his poppier songs, with a band, when his record company were still on at him to give them a hit single, which he generally didn't co-operate with. Cop a listen on youtube: search for Roy Harper One of those days in England and select the first item. It's got some wonderful lyrics, including the whimsical "Sunday's joint is cooking in my tree" (by no means the only reference to weed in his material).