How to strike a Nelson

The British can be a very fascinating kind of people. Hiding the whole year in their little caves painting tokens of their affection and imagination – with so much love, some of them even sit on them.

And when the summer sun sets over the windless hills of Comely Bank, at the 23rd of October, they come out of their lairs and celebrating, the 221th anniversary of a specific kind of maritime event.

They love their beverages and the room temperature slightly cooled. Unfurled will be a bluish yellow-brown tunic of venerable age on a garage door sized table resembling nothing less than the Atlantic ocean. Quickly after that, the little tokens, in the shape of tiny sailing ships, will deployed in a strict and linear fashion along the edges of the fabric with systematic precision.

They give them names and attach to them, small paper sheets filled with poetic words and kabbalistic numbers. Nothing less than the future or perhaps a fortune telling ritual older then the ancient I-Ching is about to enfold before the cautious and patient spectator. Dices and measuring tapes of all sorts are involved in a day long procedure that will be intermittently stopped to replenish the involved shamanistic witnesses with food and beverages and smoke.

It will be almost nightfall when after interchanging waves orgies of shouts and roarings, tears and laughter and other much more unworldy sounds will announce the epic and inevitable for this year also – Nelson did win Trafalgar!

As the Anthroposoph I am, I forgot to bring my camera, so I took some images as contraband.

Enjoy!