Museum News
Fragments from Flora Day
On Flora Day, I took up the task of being the Museum’s Writer in Residence for the day. My writing for the Museum has been research lead – whether ideas, objects or traditions – but this too is a kind of research. It’s a creative response to an unfolding event.
Despite volunteering for the museum for five years, I’d never been to Flora Day: in my defence, I live near Falmouth. This, I realised, gave me access to an experience of a first impression and you only get that once.
During the day I positioned myself at different points in town, calling on all of my senses to absorb what I could. What follows is an assemblage of things found, felt and heard. My homage to Flora Day. It will be a day that I never forget.
Like a ship on parade,
Helston is dressed overall.
Garlands frothy with Penrose bluebells
And speckles of gorse.
Lamp posts pimped by leggy Bamboo.
“Happy Flora!”
Said to the town band, assembling at the Guildhall
“Get going – get blowing!”
“Ssssshhhhhhh. Ssssshhhhh.”
The peel of church bells floats across the air.
Stifled giggles. Craned necks.
The first strike of the bass drum
reverberates in a thousand bellies.
Flora Day has begun.
“It’s better than Christmas!”
“It’s for us. All the ages.”
“Our tradition,
Handed down.”
“You can drink all day and
no one bats an eyelid.”
A child says, “Daddy.
I can see a GREEN man.
AND a pirate.”
Stewards thread
time-worn rope,
the colour of butterscotch
through the hands of the crowd.
Making a ring, a stage
for the Hal-an-Tow.
A little boy holds on tight,
and waits to see his dad.
An older man leans down and
pours a tale in his ear – “in my day the dragon
would eat a child that went inside the rope.”
“Mum. Can we go to Wetherspoons yet?”
the boy responds.
In the wake of the Hal-an-Tow,
branches litter the road.
“That hedge was really big this year.”
Band playing again. Still.
The Morning Dance in the distance.
Two women in the crowd, mark time with their feet
And bob and sway.
“It’s in the Helston bones.”
A lady looks down from her open sash window,
At the vanishing Hal-an-Tow.
Smiling, softly, to no one and everyone.
Head cupped by her hand.
A lady with a crown of painted flowers
on the skin of her head tells me
she shaved her hair off for her friend.
An inked loop of pink ribbon
rests at her nape.
The snaking line of children in crisp white,
dance to the biggest cheers.
The Midday dancers assemble in the gap
between buildings. Two women rustle by
for a ‘nervy pee’.
A woman in burnt orange chiffon
says it was worn by her mother
on another Flora Day way back then.
In the former Butter Market,
between displays
The Midday dance pours through.
The boom from the tuba feels
Like a punch to the senses.
Two hours later, the Furry Dancers
come full circle,
parched throats, tired feet.
They disperse into the crowd.
As time edges to the last dance,
The fizz of the morning becomes
slurred. Names are called,
cat-called with cackled response.
Fuzzy Flora Day has come.
Tomorrow Helston will blink
itself into a new day, already
counting down to the coming
of a new spring.
Julia Webb-Harvey, Volunteer Researcher
