296/365 Fair Flora flickr photo by NomadWarMachine shared under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license
When I was about eight years old our parents sold our family home and bought a plot of land that had once been part of an orchard. We had a static caravan which was towed onto a corner of the land and there we all lived – mum, dad and 4 children aged 8-4 – for 16 months while we built our new house on that land. It was difficult for us, as children, I cannot imagine how hard it was for my parents. But the house that we built was wonderful and we were all very happy there.
At some point after we moved in my mum got a visit from one of the local ‘characters’ – and old lady called Annie (was she once the post mistress, maybe – my memory is hazy and there’s nobody left to ask). Annie asked mum if she’d like a statue for the garden. Of course mum said yes, she was never one to turn down a free gift. So Annie turned up, under the cover of darkness, with a wheelbarrow containing a bundle wrapped in cloth. She tipped this out, unceremoniously, nearly toppling it into the burn in the corner of our garden (I was distraught as I was hoping that there might be frogs in that water!).
And so Fair Flora arrived, complete with a legend as told by Annie – of a maiden who haunted the woods over the village of Eyam (close to where we lived) and a statue in her honour liberated from one of the nearby stately homes – maybe Stoke Hall?
I don’t remember whether she was ever outside in our Derbyshire garden, but she travelled down south with us and stood in the hallway, draped in our coats. When mum and dad moved later she was consigned to their potting shed, and then I liberated her and brought her up to Scotland.
Now she sits in the corner of our patio, and she makes me very happy.
