Oasis Man: Confessions of a Closet Flower Arranger

  The Methodist church has strong links with Lincolnshire. Of course its founder, John Wesley, was born at Epworth, in the north of the county. Not surprising then that there were probably more Methodist chapels in the villages around Lincolnshire than in any other county. In some places chapels for both the Wesleyans and the Primitives could be found on the same street. Many have disappeared, been sold off and converted into stylish dwellings but several remain calling the faithful to their devotions week after week. The large Methodist Church at Coningsby where I grew up is at present in a state of limbo, no longer being used for worship but standing empty and rather forlorn waiting for the future to decide its fate. The congregation have a new place to meet now; the former doctor’s surgery in the centre of the village converted a few years back.  The old chapel stands proud on Dogdyke Road between the large Victorian manse and my parents’ humble cottage. It was in part because of this close proximity that much of my early life was bound up in the chapel. I must confess on one occasion I felt we were perhaps too close when, demonstrating my magnificent tennis serve to a friend in my back garden; I smashed a leaded window pane in the church porch. My father was for many years in charge of the coke boiler that provided heating for the building and my mother was caretaker and key-holder. I remember the bunch of keys attached to a wooden cotton reel, hanging on a nail just inside our kitchen door, there for collection by anyone wishing to access the premises. My brother and I spent several years in the Sunday school attending ‘Sunshine Corner,’ carol services, harvest festivals and Sunday school anniversaries. Every June wooden trestles would be retrieved from the stoke-hole and erected to support a large platform in front of the pulpit. This was to accommodate the twenty or thirty children who made up the Sunday school roll.  The church would be full to bursting for anniversary services. Visiting preachers were expected to host not only the usual morning and evening services but an afternoon performance as well, when all the children were expected to deliver their recitations off by heart, each one chosen because of its inspiring spiritual or moral message. Most were a little twee by today’s standards. I can still remember the verse I recited back in 1965:

“The best thing when you’re playing is to play the game right well

Drive the ball upon the green or shoot to ring the bell

Get your service o’er the net, or ride to clear the gate

But when it’s life you’re playing at, just play it clear and straight.”

 The other big event on the church calendar was the biennial flower festival. Coningsby had a fine reputation for spectacular flower festivals. All the ladies of the church really came to the fore when preparing for and supervising these events. They usually took a whole year in the planning and everything was organised down to the smallest detail and last sprig of Ulster Mary. A theme would be debated, for several months sometimes, before it would be agreed and the elements started coming together. Those trestles used for the Sunday school anniversary were unpacked and positioned at intervals across the tops of the pews down both sides of the church. Two or three more would be aligned across the rear of the church along the treacly-oak panels of the vestibule. Members of the local flower club, were usually awarded a trestle-table each whilst nervous amateurs and latecomers were allocated a window sill which, positioned in the gaps between the tables, were used for slightly smaller arrangements. At the front of the church between the pulpit and altar rail was a large area often given over, in courtesy, to (Mrs Cammack and) the ladies who ran the local florists; the church knew on which side their bread was buttered. The curved mahogany pediment above the door to the preachers’ vestry was a challenge normally allocated to a younger member of the flower club as she (for many years farmer’s wife, Lorna Curtis ) needed to be agile enough to balance precariously on a step ladder whilst completing her arrangement, some 8-9ft above the ground. The large vestibule with its leaded lights was where all visitors arrived before entering the main building. It too was adorned with flowers in both pedestals and vases. Everything lush and colourful; minimalism and ikebana hadn’t reached Coningsby yet. The theme of the festival was introduced by way of a simple printed guide. I still have a couple of these pamphlets from the mid-1960s, from the era of typewriters and Roneo copiers, when stencils were made on waxed mulberry paper to enable foolscap sheets to be reproduced in abundance. One year literary quotes were selected as a basis for all the arrangements. So Mrs Walker interpreted a verse from Luke 12 inviting us to "Consider the lilies of the field how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin. Mrs Cade opted for rather the more obscure, "I saw horses in the vision: those who sat on them had breastplates of fiery red, hyacinth blue, and sulfur yellow” from Revelations 9. Then there was my mother’s choice clearly prompted by the fact the author was a fellow yellowbelly, Alfred Lord Tennyson,

 "In the spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish'd dove;
In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.

‘Local luminaries’ were the subject of another year’s celebrations. That’s ‘Celebrities’ to you and me. I think the title was chosen for its alliterative qualities. The obvious ones were represented; Isaac Newton, John Franklin, Joseph Banks, the Wesleys and Tennyson of course. But also allowed their fifteen minutes of fame were other notable Lincolnshire figures; Captain John Smith (friend of Pocahontas), poetess Jean Ingelow, conductor Sir Malcolm Sargent,  golfer Tony Jacklin, Billy Butlin and the founding father of computing, George Boole, the brilliant mathematician noted for his work on Boolean Algebra.

It is at this point that I feel another confession coming on. It was at one of these festivals on the Friday evening when they were downing secateurs for the day, that I said to a couple of the ‘ladies’ why don’t you put some flowers on the ends of the pews. We had seen this done when my mother had dragged me round a similar event at Hawthorn Hill, Holland Fen or some such place where they hadn’t got the window sills to accommodate any arrangements. Coningsby’s centre pews were all around 15 feet long, chocolaty brown and quite dull, being devoid of flowers and foliage whilst the sides of the church were a mass of floral colour. My mother found me half dozen or so brass tobacco tins, already crammed with rectangles of oasis, secured by a criss-cross of green tape and elastic bands. I scavenged for a few flowers and managed to glean quite a lot of foliage which the others had already discarded onto the bed-sheets strewn in all directions around the chapel floor. I had to move quick in case they changed their minds but I had soon amassed enough cuttings to complete my task. With a little guidance from my mother on the first I created the remaining five, small arrangements which were duly attached onto the narrow, yet flat, ledges of alternate pews. Now they weren’t that great I’m know so I wasn’t sure of the reaction my efforts would get when Mrs Cammack, the floral stylistic equivalent of Gok Wan, turned up the next morning. She arrived to finish her own masterpieces and help my Mum make table decorations for the school-room where teas were due to be served. Arriving about 9:30 within minutes Mrs Cammack had asked my mother who had done the pew-ends. My mother sprinted through the wrought-iron gate that linked the properties, round to our back porch, and I was summoned.

“You didn’t do all these did you?” was her accusation.

“No,” I answered, “Only five of them, mum did the other one.”

I was a very literal child; anyway I wasn’t going take the whole blame. But she didn’t censure me, instead she turned to my mum and said, “He’s got an eye for it, let him have a go at some of those table decorations in the schoolroom and I’ll finish the pedestals.” And indeed that’s what happened.

So you see, I could have been a contender, Oasis Man, up there with Llewelyn-Bowen, Alan Titchmarsh and the like. But I never did pursue a career in floristry. However, even though thirty years later it is my wife’s name that appears at regular two-monthly intervals on our chapel’s flower rota, but guess who really ends up doing the job!