It’s the shortest day for us here in the northern hemisphere, and it certainly felt like it, driving home with the children at 3.20pm, lights already on in the car.

Stonehenge looms large in the English psyche, reminding us of our pagan past, a pre-Christian era, Arthurian legend and folklore, and Druidism.

Each solstice there is generally marked by some sort of ceremony.

The area around a greater Stonehenge area, including Avebury, on down into Dorset and Cerne Abbas and the mythical seat of King Arthur, at Avalon, often assumed to be in the general region of Glastonbury, in Somerset, best known for its music festival, are generally assumed, in the English psyche, to be a hotbed of ‘magic’ as a result. They’re certainly magical places, in terms of the outstanding views and a less rushed, more relaxed approach to life once one escapes from London down the M4 (Motorway 4, the English ‘autobahn’ or ‘freeway’ system) corridor.

I love the area, and Bath, named for its Roman Baths, is also fairly unique and special.

Anyway, today’s solstice, sunrise on the shortest day, was marked in the usual manner, and should remind us that the days are now on the turn, lengthening all the way until June.

SL has its own Stonehenge, so visit if you wish to drink in the virtual magic of the place, and marvel, in the RL variant, that a society from x thousand years ago could a) build it at all and b) build it on scientific lines, its stones lining up with the suns of the solstices.

RL determines that I can’t be at Stonehenge, but those who do attend regard it as being a special experience. Denied a RL opportunity to be at the henge, I took the opportunity to visit its SL version. Nudity is, of course, part of pagan ritual; ‘skyclad’ referring to being naked. So I didn’t feel out of place being suitably ‘skyclad’ for my visit to the virtual henge at ‘sunrise’ (granted, it was mid-evening before I got to do this in SL!)

Ella