{"id":15626,"date":"2008-05-01T06:22:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-01T10:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/hameblog\/2008\/05\/01\/beltane-prague\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T07:49:44","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T10:49:44","slug":"beltane-prague","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/2008\/05\/01\/beltane-prague\/","title":{"rendered":"Beltane & Prague"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last night was Beltane, the annual pagan-y, nude-y, fire-y rite of spring that happens atop Edinburgh’s Calton Hill. I was tired — I feel quite drawn this weekend, and not in cartoon form — but I couldn’t miss it, ’cause it’s become an important event in my year, both as a bit of local culture and as a special time with friends.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

(Forgive my crap cameraphone photography. I could buy a swish expensive camera for taking these shots, but I’d still produce the same result. Photography is one art that eludes me completely.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\"200804302208_053\"
Flaming icons on Edinburgh’s folly — the start of the Beltane ceremony.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\"200804302317_055\"
A red, half-naked female demon spins hula-hoops of doom around her body. It was raining at this point, but nothing could touch her.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

[EDIT: As usual, Liz<\/a> did a much better job of documenting the occasion.]<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

I’m at a coffeeshop, working (yay!). I’m drinking my decaf coffee black, ’cause I’ve been ingesting way too much heavy and junky food lately. I’d declare some sort of new eating habit to compensate, except I’m going to Prague at the weekend, joining one old friend from Toronto to visit a mutual friend who’s doing real estate development there. The former is a restaurateur and the latter is a flashy entrepreneur with a taste for the high life, so… this is clearly not the time for declarations.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

When am I going to finish my novel?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

p><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night was Beltane, the annual pagan-y, nude-y, fire-y rite of spring that happens atop Edinburgh’s Calton Hill. I was tired — I feel quite drawn this weekend, and not in cartoon form — but I couldn’t miss it, ’cause it’s become an important event in my year, both as a bit of local culture […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15626\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hame.ink\/blether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}