On first impression it’s enough to put a nesting Robin off its stride for good and liable to bring other garden creepers into disrepute - but it’s just the English celebrating Spring.

The caption to Toby Melville’s picture informs us, “A costumed festival participant marches in the Jack In The Green procession in Hastings in southern England May 5, 2008. The traditional annual May Day festival has origins at least as far back as the 17th century, with hundreds of costume-clad dancers and musicians - many dressed in green foliage - marching through the coastal town and symbolically slaying a giant Jack at the finale.”.

Some are more ‘out’ than others.

Elsewhere other revellers cover themselves in the remains of dead animals and 

there is evidence that it is something to do with fertility;

also that the Kruegers may have English country cousins.

Having grown up in the ‘Green Belt’ around London believing that ‘rural’ meant nothing to do evenings and weekends, I had always considered myself something of a country boy; however I was completely oblivious to any of this organised ritual fertility business. Of course it may just have been that I never got invited but surely all of us look pretty much alike after a couple of coats of green paint. 

As the song has it, “it’s life Jim but not as we know it“.

I wonder if it works with Magnolia emulsion paint?