Hope you have all had a good week. When you read this, I will be entirely off-grid, camping in Savernake Forest in Wiltshire with old friends. We’ve done this on the Solstice (or near it) every year for the last two and a half decades. It always falls just before or after my wedding anniversary (Derek and I celebrated 23 years married last week, 29 together). Indeed, the night before our wedding, we drove from the campsite in Savernake to Le Manoir Aux Quat’Saison where we stayed before our big day.rnrnThere is something about the ancient oaks, the wild raspberries, the mighty beeches and the serenity of one of the UK’s biggest, oldest forests which never fails to soothe my soul. Camping is good for slowing everything down to the essentials; the hours pass pottering around making coffee over a gas stove; washing up; chatting aimlessly with friends; shooting the breeze with their kids. I went when I was pregnant with my eldest child and then the next year I bathed her in a bucket with a crop of other clan babies. This 2002 vintage are now post-Uni and mid-20s. But all the grown kids come back to camp with us every year too.
We’ve created a web of a wider “family” which matters hugely to us all. It is these annual returns that truly mark the passing of time; camping in Savernake every summer has become for all of us a secular ritual. A marker of how far we have come – of where we are going, anchored by the timeless unchanging presence of the trees.rnrnI’ve been thinking about the importance of ritual recently. At the Warwickshire retreat last weekend one of the Queenagers who is a funeral celebrant was talking about our modern society’s lack of meaningful ritual around death: “20 minutes at the Crematorium doesn’t really cut it,” she said.
She’s spent time in Africa where it was normal to spend 3 days mourning and wailing – “There you mourn the dead person but also your own sorrows”. I see the same positive centreing of death in Jamaica where the “set up” – the funeral party – is a whole community event where everyone comes together, relatives return from the diaspora, lives are celebrated.rnrnBut we don’t just need ritual around death. Two weeks ago I attended the sumptuous wedding (second time round) of a longtime friend to one of our university contemporaries – a mighty 160-person celebration and return (it took place back in Oxford). There were so many old friends, new friends and those I hadn’t seen for 30 years. There was also wonderful intergenerational fun; I sat next to Cass my beloved god-child. What a joy to get 3 hours chatting with them, to tune into their life and hear all their news.
One of the great boons of age is the pleasure of hanging out with youngsters one has known all their lives. That sense of being an “auntie”, an “elder”, a trusted quasi-relative who has been a fixture since they were in nappies. There is such trust and intimacy and insight here – both into the reality of being a 20something in 2025 (not that easy: getting into careers, finding a place to live and a partner all seem more fraught now) but also the pleasurable easy exchange of having one’s opinion sought, one’s experience called upon.
I love this the other way round too: I feel so lucky to have a plethora of older sisters/chosen elders who mother and look out for me too. I feel very planted in a web of intergenerational affection, which is enhanced by many friends of my own stage (and all of you wonderful Queenagers). Truly one of the joys of midlife is this interconnectivity with others at different stages – and the occasions which reveal and celebrate it.
I was thinking too about how this soul-balm, this solace, isn’t just found in people but also in place and the mini rituals which accompany a return to somewhere we love. Savernake I can feel my cortisol levels subside as I erect my bell tent, chatting to my mates, blowing up roll mats amidst the banter and easy camaraderie of an old crew. We eat my favourite cheese/tomato/onion/spinach omelettes, the making of which is its own leisurely ritual.I was chatting to NOON Editorial Director Jen who is going home to her native Texas with her daughter soon and she was saying their rituals include swimming every day, a visit to a particular favourite burrito shop with extended family and a trip to Target to revel in American stuff they can’t get here.
I know what she means: One of my favourite things is a crab salad at a beach café on our annual return to our favourite north Devon surf beach. The particular flouriness of their white baps; the taste of the crab while smelling the salt air; a coffee while sitting at the picnic tables with a side order of ozone.
It is these small familiar treats which become some of our most meaningful personal rituals; the sign that we are on holiday, off duty, on recharge.
This weekend I feel a particular need for replenishment. Last weekend was my sister’s birthday – another great new modern ritual. This one was a huge celebration of her, her world, her dear and eccentric Annie-ness. My little nieces were beside themselves with excitement, sugar-hyped turning cartwheels glad to be part of their wider clan, on a family-induced high.
There was a teen posse hanging out and also the oldies, both my parents and a clutch of old and dear family friends and cousins. Again, this multigenerational melange was particularly touching. Everywhere I looked there were tableaux of old friendships and family mixed up together. A web of love.
And on Sunday a NOON get-together in Warwick – that too with its own rhythm of lunch, a walk to the lake, a swim, the return and the coming together in Circle.
We are at the peak of the year, the sun is at its zenith, the warmth and long evenings invite us into nature and companionship. They tease us to return to familiar spots for rest and replenishment; to dive into our personal rituals and our time-tested webs of love. And they call us to create new rituals as time shifts and circumstances change; to blend the old with the new, welcome in new life and say farewell to those passing on.
We’re the threads holding the fabric together
Us Queenagers in midlife, in the middle, hold the threads between the generations. Not old yet, but older. Offering advice but also receiving support. Hopefully sinking into some summer respite and repose.
I will be walking through the ancient forest, lying on a rug chatting and reading a book with my kids and husband and friends. Recuperating, replenishing, recharging in the midsummer beauty of an ancient forest.
What are your midsummer rituals? Where and with whom do you relax and kick back? Do tell me – eleanor@noon.org.uk
Come join our ritual!
If you’d like to give yourself a new ritual treat, why not come to Wasing on July 18th, where I am delighted to announce we’ll be adding to the usual formula with some Forest Bathing, led by Liz Dawes. I included Liz’s story in my book and who many of you met at Broughton. She is the Queen of helping us to relax and take in our surroundings. Her magic enables us to slow down enough to appreciate where and what we are.
And if you fancy a treat, come to Oxford on July 10th and watch The Salt Path and me interviewing Raynor Winn (if you send me some questions to eleanor@noon.org.uk, I’ll put them to her).
Big thanks to Jenny Knight author of Wild Moon Rising for coming to talk to the NOON Book Club (if you missed it, the replay is here). And next week there is a whole round of NOON Circles with the theme of midlife friendship, including the ones I host, in London on Wednesday July 2nd at the fancy new Allbright and online on
P.S. We’ve put together a WhatsApp group to do some thinking about rituals around grief. If you would like to be added (and are a paid member of NOON), then email me eleanor@noon.org.uk with your mobile number and I’ll add you.
Much love,
Eleanor
P.S. We’d love it if you could answer a few questions for us here at NOON on this Google Form, so we get a sense of what is most pressing for you. It’s 3 short questions – just taking your temperature on what you do and don’t want. You can be totally frank – and we’ll report back soon, so you get a sense of what everyone is thinking and talking about.
