Flower arranging

I was honored to once again be asked to 'do' a church window for the Harvest Festival service this weekend. This is the fifth year running that I've put a flower arrangement in the back window which seems to be my lot. I have ambitions to make it further 'up' the church, where mine makes the first impression when the congregation walk in, rather than being at the back, behind the door, where they may not even notice it on their way out. Mind, this year, because several people were away, I was allowed to do one behind the pillar on the other side...

In my former life, as a 'wife-of' I had a baptism of fire on the flower arranging front. I should tell you that while I love to be given flowers, and have no difficulty popping them in a vase, flower arranging isn't something that I'd particularly thought about beforehand. However, on giving up a perfectly respectable management job in order to follow Husband to Germany on a posting to a regiment, I discovered this was something of a failing on my part. Husband had been landed with the job of Mess Secretary, a role in which the officers take turns, it being their responsibility to organise functions of varying descriptions from lunch parties to full flung balls. Within a few short weeks of our arrival there was to be a parade with a lunch for luminaries from all over Germany, and 'our' regimental mess was to host the function. The Brigadier in charge insisted on a full rehearsal of table laying and menu tastings including table decorations. And you will guess that this is where they rely on those wives!

As the wife of the MC it was apparently my responsibility to purchase and arrange flowers, dragging in other wives to help - in budget of course. I'm reasonably artistic, and I like flowers so it wasn't that I wasn't prepared to have a go, but I can't express just how pressured I felt with this dry demanding Brigadier breathing down my husband's neck! All went well in the end, the Brigadier was satisfied, and my flower arranging is rather better since then. But I've never succeeded in doing the delicate little sprays that we were supposed to do on top of candlesticks, nor yet the genteel triangle of flowers of the traditional arrangement. Even church windows have an etiquette that I have not yet achieved. I expect, if others are away, I may be asked to help again next year.