May 2026 be the year things change and peace to us all - Christa Ackroyd

Spiders were as nothing. She used to catch them with her bare hands and throw them outside. Bugs and caterpillars (the latter my own shudder-inducing little critters) were flicked away as if they were of no consequence.

As for worms she would pick them up with her bare hands replacing them on the soil declaring them good for the garden and fodder for the birds. But snakes.

If one even came on the television during her favourite nature programmes not even David Attenborough could make her stay.

She would simply get up, find the off switch, or leave the room muttering ‘I can’t watch that’.

Over the years I have been called upon to meet many reptiles in the truest natural sense of the word, often wrapping them around my arms or neck for some television show of bravado.

Big ones, little ones and ones that quite frankly looked as though they could eat you alive. And far from living up to the adage slippery as a snake, each and everyone felt the same. Dry and scaly.

So why do I mention it? Because this year in the Chinese calendar has been the year of the snake. No I haven’t gone mad and I may be clutching at straws here, but hear me out.

This may be a side of me you never considered. To many I am straight down the middle, black and white and logical to the nth degree – in many ways I am.

Practical is virtually my middle name. I believe in a divine power, but I also believe in astrology. Not in a witchy kind of a way.

Nor do I go around asking people’s star signs or pour over readings of the day. But I do believe there is something about the earth’s pull that affects each and every one of us.

Take for example the moon. There is something about a full moon I genuinely believe affects our mood. And why wouldn’t it? The moon affects the tides.

There is nothing more powerful than the back and forth of the rivers and the sea as I found out swimming off the beach in Sydney today, where I literally felt its force. I had to really swim strongly against the tide.

Talking of which there is a reason that became well worn phrase, because it is not easy to do. If you want a scientific fact to back me up it is that it is the moon which affects the gravitational pull twice as much the sun. And it is that gravitational pull which is so strong it affects the seas.

So if all we are really just molecules bound together in matter why wouldn’t it affect us too ? I told you I would sound a little weird this week.

Then there are star signs. Poppycock I hear many of you say. End of the pier shenanigans. But is it ? You don’t get more Taurus the bull than me. Strong yes. I have had to be.

But stubborn, oh my goodness, that is as much a part of my character as my bull in a china shop ways which try as I may I fight to control. And yet I am also fiercely home loving and the things and people I surround myself with are my greatest luxury.

I am also loyal to a fault, even when that loyalty is severity tested. Greedy? Absolutely. A Taurean’s love of food is well documented as my life of over indulgence and diets have born out.

But let us get back to science and the moon and the sun. The moon stabilises the Earth’s tilt creating seasonal patterns, rather than drastic shifts between extreme heat and deep freezes, and that’s according to the BBC.

As the earth orbits the Sun, its tilt causes different hemispheres to receive more direct sunlight at different times of the year, creating summer and winter. That is how the animal kingdom is directly affected by both the sun and the moon.

How does an otter know when to start building their dens? I saw one doing that only the other day on the canal in Skipton and it was mesmerising. How do the birds know how to do the same as well as when to swarm and when to leave for warmer climates?

Why do animals most susceptible to the cold know when to hibernate for winter and how do many increase their coats for the cold and shed them when the weather warms?

Because nature is ruled by the planets too, particularly the moon and the sun around which our solar system orbits.

It is a fascinating fact that animals rely on light from the sun to set their clocks, which in turn tell them when to sleep and when to eat. Solar eclipses can cause birds to stop singing, and nocturnal animals to begin their night time habits during the day.

Not only that but one study suggests that during a full moon vets are more likely to be 20 per cent busier with emergency admissions for cats and dogs.

And I for one definitely feel less able to sleep and distinctly unsettled when the moon is full.

So why on earth am I rabbiting on about all this nature and the planets? Because having lost my faith in much of mankind, I am hoping for a miracle as we enter 2026.

So I am looking elsewhere and anywhere hoping there is some force stronger than we which will help shift towards the reset our planet so desperately needs to survive. At the moment that is my interest in ancient Chinese astrology.

This last year has been the year of the snake. Sorry mum. It still is. Not until the Chinese New Year is celebrated mid February will it change. But if I am reading my tea leaves right change is coming and it’s galloping in fast.

The close of any year of the snake always ends with the shedding of its skin. It is not detrimental to the snake itself, rather an out with the old and an in with the new mentality.

And boy do we need to shed some parts of last year. What’s more the incoming year is swift of foot and fast in nature. Next month we are entering the year of the horse.

And not just any horse, the fire horse, a once in 60-year cycle which also coincides with an end to a nine year planetary cycle which I am happy to blame for anything and everything as long as it has now ended.

The fire horse is fascinating. Yes it can be wild and dangerous but they are also seen as having the ability to thrive on challenges, blaze through obstacles with determination and a strong will, thrive in adversity and bring about progress and transformation with courage and ambition.

So mock if you will, laugh if you must, but this person for one is clinging onto that, to almost anything, that represents a new world order.

Be it the shedding of the old or the galloping in of the new. May 2026 be the year things change. And may it bring peace to us all.