Bluebells

[smokingboot]

I bought a little pot of them very recently, and today they're in bloom. These ones are slightly different to the ones I recall, the scent sweet and strong if not as fresh. I'm about to recount a pointless and sentimental memory, so out of charity, I'll employ the cut.


Bluebells are special to me. They're part of my own mythology. The first time they really came to my attention was as part of a poetic/mystic experience that is so private I don't feel ready - quite - to write it down, even after all these years.

It occured in a woodland outside Salisbury, an hour before I had to catch the train back to London. I didn't tell the friends I was staying with, because it sounded as absurd then as it would do now, but let's just say the link between bluebells and the Horned One, spirit of the woods, was strong and fresh in my mind.

Chum - and he was just a chum - gave me a lift towards the station. The sun was setting when he suddenly stopped the car on a deserted road, and without a word rushed off into the woods at the side. He came back with his arms full of bluebells which he dumped on me without ceremony. I sat there, bewitched by the gesture, the setting sun and the bluebells. It didn't need the previous experience to make it perfect, but the combination just tipped me into a state of euphoria. Ford Prefect has a point: the garden is beautiful enough without imagining fairies in it. But if they're there already, what can you do?

Chum remains the only being I know to have succeeded in silencing me for over five full minutes. When I spoke, all I could say was 'You shouldn't have...they're endangered...'
His reply was 'The woods are full of them. They can spare you a few bluebells.'

I clutched the bluebells all the way to Waterloo and beyond to Brixton, looking like one of those crazy women who wander round in their slippers and shout at passers-by. By the time I got home, they (the bluebells, not the women) were fading fast.


So today the bluebells opened and I remembered, and realised my mistake. I should never have bought a single pot; I should have turned the conservatory into a sea of them.