THE fun never stops in this house. Last Saturday at 11pm - a time when, if you're young, you're heading off to Tofts, and if you're not, you're heading off to bed - saw us making dragon eggs. Forty of them.

All we had to work with was a clutch of imitation hens' eggs. They clearly hadn't been laid by a Hungarian Horntail but it was late and, having put all our plastic eggs in one basket, so to speak, my friend Sharon and I set to work with felt pens, poster paint and a roll of Bacofoil, while the husband Googled dragon pictures and printed them out on to sticky labels.

The next day saw me sprinting round the park tying the eggs to railings and trees, prior to a mad stampede of children setting off in hot pursuit. The idea was for them to collect letters, which were attached to some of the eggs, in order to solve a mystery word and collect a small prize.

(Inspired by Judge Peter Smith, who encrypted his own secret message in his written summary of the Da Vinci Code plagiarism case, I have included a simplified trail in this column so that readers can join in, though I apologise for not being able to offer fruit chews to those who crack it. The kids ate them all.)

Anyway, I'm sorry that Archbishop John Sentamu couldn't make the Young Friends of Rowntree Park St George's Day Fun (we did invite him but he was busy) because he has spoken about the need to celebrate our patron saint and I think he would have enjoyed himself. As well as the dragon-egg hunt we made a dragon out of frames of willow wands decorated with scraps of material and processed him around the tennis court, to the accompaniment of much enthusiastic roaring.

Most of the children probably didn't have a clue about who St George was, apart from six-year-old Adam, who came in his knight's costume and parried the dragon skilfully with his wooden sword, and ten-year-old Ruth, an expert in Dragonology, who claimed, subversively, that St George didn't kill the dragon at all. (I told her to keep this to herself for fear of word reaching the Scouts, who were marching past playing the Indiana Jones theme tune, since he is their patron saint).

Talking of English cultural traditions, which is what I believe Dr Sentamu wanted us to rediscover when he talked about reclaiming our national identity (as opposed to voting for the BNP, which one-fifth of York voters are apparently considering), I am looking forward to May Day Bank Holiday and a spot of Morris dancing. Possibly. If we can round any up.

The problem is, May 1 is a busy day for Morris dancers. I was brought up in Oxford, where May Morning is popular, with people partying all night and dancing in the streets and wearing flowers in their hair/beards and drinking way too early (though I don't advise downing a pint of cider before breakfast, as I once did, especially if you've got to go to work later).

Personally, I am ready to embrace spring with as much bell-jingling as possible (I did, briefly, belong to a ladies' Morris side, but their uniform of purple breeches and yellow socks was too dire). It's been such a dismal, dragged-out winter and now that the leaves are finally unfurling, my not-quite-so-young woman's fancy has turned to songs about cuckoos and Maying and merry lads and bonny lasses making out on the greeny grass, which all comes from having been a bit of a folkie in my youth.

This is something I rarely publicly admit to, but hey! "Folk Is No Longer Strange", as BBC Radio York's trailer for its Wednesday-night North Yorkshire Folk gravely intones. Now that a new generation of musicians is making folk music positively hip (Kate Rusby rocks), I am happy to dust down my Steeleye Span collection and get back to my pagan roots.

The dragon polished off by St George actually represents paganism (Ruth was partly right: early legends claim there was no fight involved - he simply made the sign of the cross and the dragon fainted). May Day, too, is imbued with our pagan past, coming from the Celtic festival of Beltane which was big on fertility rites. It was stamped out by the Puritans and revived by Charles II in a more sanitised form, although the old symbolism survives (guess what the erect May pole represents?).

So, come Monday, I expect you to be up at dawn and washing your face in the dew, but only that of a hawthorn tree or it won't make you beautiful.

Just don't sit under it, or you'll be taken away by the fairies. Allegedly.

And if that isn't enough celebrating of our heritage, I can recommend welly wanging, a peculiarly English pastime which prompted a large and enthusiastic turnout last Sunday. It's not strictly traditional, but I think it should be encouraged, if only because, with the London Olympics coming up in 2012, it is useful training for the shot put.

Updated: 10:06 Saturday, April 29, 2006