Just before Christmas I made a wreath of holly, ivy and conifer to put on the main stone of the labyrinth in Bollington. It just seemed too tempting. It must have been the Well Dresser in me that made me do it.
I felt a bit self-conscious when I was actually putting it in place but I thought I was alone. Wrong! I turned around to find a lady watching me. She said, “Nice, but how long will it last before someone destroys it?” That had not occurred to me, but I thought that, even if it only stayed for a day or two, at least I knew that I had done it.
Well it has stayed in place – so much so that I have felt guilty about leaving it there for so long. Although I had received permission (retrospectively) from Deborah, who masterminded the whole project, I thought that she might be too polite to tell me that it had outstayed it’s welcome.
Then I got an Email from her and thought – this is it! A gentle telling-off. But this is what she wrote:-
“Took friends round the labyrinth on Sunday. I took the wreath down, with a view to ask you to replace it with a spring time one, but in the time spent walking the labyrinth and chatting, 2 groups of older men came over completely independently from each other and carried the wreath( which I’d laid on the side of the Middlewood way) back to its crowning place on the monolith. Each thinking that vandals had taken it down! Neither groups had seen the other replace it, as I put it back to the side of the path after the first group passed.! How weird is that?
The moral of the story is perhaps that everyone likes the wreath, and perhaps we could have one there to represent the changing seasons? Hint,hint!
I didn’t dare remove it a second time and wondered whether we could have a spring one for when the clocks change?
I’m still on a mission to write the book – ‘The Inward and Outward Journey of the Bollington Festival Labyrinth’ so hope to include these sort of wonderful stories.”
Well, I can take a hint and I will enjoy making a spring wreath, although flowers might fade quickly and need replacing often.
So, Bollington, if you see a tired wreath and you can easily fix things, please do it.
May I say, that the people in Bollington are great, and Bollington rocks!
Tags: Bollington, cheshire, conifer, dressing, england, holly, ivy, labyrinth, season, stone, U.K., wreath
Leave a Reply