[The listening experience is linked to Susan Silvester’s memories of the two village schools she attended, aged five to twelve, near her home in Minworth, north of Birmingham]

The brightest spot of the school year at Walmley was a kind of festival in Sutton Park where we used to dance the maypole. [...]

Talking about the maypole reminds me about the usual May Day celebrations which used to take place every year. All the farmers and roundsmen’s horses were beautifully decorated with coloured ribbons and braid woven into their manes and tails, with rosettes on their harness and sometimes plumes on their heads […] We children used to make a maypole by decorating a long stick with flowers and go round the village singing

"The First of May is a very happy day,

Please to remember maypole day."