Tra La, It's May!

"Tra la! It's May!
The lusty month of May!
That lovely month when ev'ryone goes
Blissfully astray.
Tra la! It's here!
That shocking time of year
When tons of wicked little thoughts
Merrily appear!"

From "The Lusty Month of May" from Camelot, music and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Lowe



It's MAY! Where is the year going? That's what I always wonder when May arrives; when it seems like the year just began a minute ago, but now it is about to be half over....

When we were kids, we had a record player - you know, one of those things with a turntable and a needle that you lower down ever-so-carefully onto your record, and the record spins and somehow, the needle against the turning record makes music! I know! Magic!!

When you think about it, in its day the record and record player were just as magical technology as being able to download songs to your cell phone is now....

Anyway, as children, we listened to the soundtrack from the original Broadway version of Camelot (the only one that counts in my book), starring Richard Burton as King Arthur, Julie Andrews as Guinevere and Robert Goulet as Lancelot. I listened to this record over and over and I think that even today if you were to quiz me, I'd be able to sing just about all the lyrics to not just this song, but the WHOLE musical.

The song is about  breaking out of winter doldrums into spring and letting loose. When the birds and the bees do their thing and love is in the air. And so it was for Guinevere in Camelot, though her own lusty thoughts brought things there to rather a bad end....

Down here is Florida, May is the end of what we call "season." Season is basically the first three months of the year when the snowbirds are here enjoying the beautiful weather. By the end of April they've begun to migrate back to their northern climes and by mid-May they are mostly gone. 

For those of us who stay behind, May is not so much a time of breaking free and making merry, as it is a time of regrouping and figuring out how we will make the hot and humid summer months feel a little less long.

I use my stuck-inside summer season for writing. So I hope to make good progress on my two book projects this summer. I'll keep you posted!