Country life
Flower power
Leanda de Lisle
On Friday morning I was on guard duty in the church for the NSPCC's Flower Festival. 'You should take a book along,' the local jeweller had advised me at the preview the night before. That seemed like a good idea, although in the end I took along the Daily Telegraph and The Spectator instead. I sat down on the pew behind the jar that had been left out for donations, and tried to fold the newspaper into a dis- creet size, reasoning that, if the Anglican Church is the Tory party at prayer, then the Daily Telegraph is surely the Anglican Church at breakfast. But you can imagine the noise I made and, while I had served and consumed cheese and wine quite hap- pily in the church the night before, I felt as if I was drawing attention to a rather sleazy activity.
There's something very mammonish about newspapers — or perhaps there's just something very mammonish about origami. That's what I hoped as I put the Telegraph on one side, hunched further down in my pew and tucked into Anne McElvoy in The Spectator. At that moment, my NSPCC boss turned up. My place on the local committee is akin to that of Pike, the 'idiot boy' in Dad's Army. I sit in meet- ings with my eyes glazed and one leg vibrating until I'm brought round by a direct request such as 'bake two dozen scones for Wednesday week', or 'guard the flower displays on Friday morning'.
'You really need to watch everyone who's going round the church, Leanda,' my boss informed me with the impatient smile she delivers when I'm being particularly infuri- ating. 'People have been known to steal things from the displays and sometimes they will even pull out a flower or two.'
I stood up like an awkward teenager and put my glasses in my handbag. 'Er, of course,' I muttered apologetically, and strode off to check out the three old ladies hovering around the Oranges and Lemons display by the altar. They seemed to be rather expert on the subject of flower arrangements, and were probably members of the local branch of NAFAS — The National Association of Flower Arrange- ment Societies. This organisation, which is now about 40 years old, has about 100,000 members nation-wide and raises about £500,000 a year for charity. The women who arrange flowers in churches are at the heart of it. Over the years their arrange- ments developed into festivals that raise money for the Church and various chari- ties, as well as the shows that you see on a small scale at agricultural fairs and on a bigger scale at places like Chelsea.
The shows and festivals are usually given a title and arrangers are given an exhibit to interpret in keeping with the theme. The theme at our festival was 'Suffer the Little Children', so we had train signals and teddy-bears among the flowers.
I had thought of doing a feature on these sorts of dos, but the women involved are rather shy of the press. The NAFAS head of publicity gave me a number you can't ring into and the local member I spoke to begged me not to publish her name if I wrote anything. 'I'm not going to do some kind of terrible exposé,' I assured her.
"NAFAS Members Dance Naked Round Fires Clutching Demonic Flower Arrange- ments" — nothing like that.' She claimed that she believed me, but wanted to 'remain behind the scenes'. 'We don't want to be laughed at like people laugh at the Women's Institute,' a NAFAS judge explained. And I could understand why, although I am well aware that these flower arrangers give a lot of people a lot of plea- sure and it ill behoves the rest of us to belittle them.
In any case, the flowers in our church looked beautiful, better to my mind than any I've seen elsewhere, and it really wasn't a chore discreetly trailing young families and old ladies as they moved round the church. I paid particular attention to a thir- ty-something male with a large beer gut, gazing intently at the 'Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam' arrangement, but it transpired he was trying to remember the words to the hymn. When I spotted the vicar and explained what I was doing, I commented that I'd never seen a less likely group of vandals and teddy-bear snatchers. 'Don't be so sure,' he whispered back grimly. I think he must have been rather badly affected by the theft of the Elizabethan church silver earlier in the week. The story made the local newspapers, of course. On reflection, I've worked out why it felt so uncomfortable to be reading a paper in church. It's not that they are mammonish, but they describe the worship of mammon with all its grisly consequences. And it's a pity I had to turn my eyes away, not to enjoy something good that people do, but the evil they might do, even in this beautiful church in the heart of a quiet market town.
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