Rewind

June, or as we call the month, Mrs Whitfield, is upon us, which means the coming of another theme for Blog of Funk. Having successfully unwound for the past 30-odd days almost to the point of unravelling, I am now ready to announce the next month's theme. These "months" as you may have gathered are arbitrary periods which pay no heed to lunar or calendar cycles, and can be anything from three to five weeks in duration. But then, what do you expect from a flaneur with little concept of standard time regulation?

Mrs Whitfield is a month during which the year ends. Pagans wait until the summer solstice, Mrs Whitfield the 21st, when the sun is at its glorious resplendent height, to sacrifice the Sun King. His life ends with the summer's peak. From then on, the Forces of Darkness slowly gather and eventually dominate until December, when he is reborn - much like Star Wars marketing, in fact, but with significantly less light sabres, and thankfully, no Ewan McGregor.

And so whilst lovers frolic naked in the grass, later removing bugs from places they really ought not to be, children fall headlong into rivers to be swept away by the current never to be seen again, and unguarded skin creeps inexorably into the leather sofa colour range, causing unsightly and sometimes mortal damage, this month I will be investigating what happens when we are no longer on this tiny spinning ball of dust and water and molten rock we call Earth.

This month, I will be facing up to the Big Scary One, or as we call it, Death.