Tower and Town, March 2023 (view the full edition)‘Granny March’On 1 March in Bulgaria everyone in the family or at work welcomes the beginning of spring by giving each other little red and white tokens. These are either threads of twisted wool which can be worn round one's wrist or a pair of little woollen figures, which can be pinned onto a lapel. The white, male figure is Picho and the red, female figure is Penda. This coloured thread is a 'martenitsa', a word obviously cognate with 'March'. As you give one to a member of your family or to a friend or colleague, you say 'Chestita Baba Marta', which means 'Congratulations! Granny March!'. You wear the martenitsa until you see your first stork and then you take the thread off and hang it on the branch of a tree. When King Charles visited Bulgaria several years ago when he was Prince of Wales he was presented with a martenitsa and one wonders - as storks are rarely seen, if at all, in the British Isles - what he did with it after he returned home. Perhaps the first cuckoo or the first swallow would have counted as an acceptable substitute, as a sign of the arrival of spring. See cover picture (and note the stork) John Osborne |