The Cornflower Seeds

Most people fall in love at least once in their lifetime, some others more often. In Neil Weatherall’s case, with his childhood sweetheart and first love Lucy Jennings, he seems destined to follow a predictable path towards marriage and a family.

A simple posy of cornflowers and the associated folklore surrounding them that Neil offers Lucy as a romantic gesture just after they first meet, come to symbolise the vagaries of life as fate, both good and bad, begin to overtake Neil’s life and loves. Could it be, despite the unhappy change in their circumstances that Neil’s first love will always be the one that returns to haunt him.

In later years, with success and eventual wealth offering some respite from tragedy on life’s uncertain path, unforeseen events continue to dictate the future happiness of all concerned. It seems through life’s experiences that whatever the depth of feeling between two people, fate alone determines their lasting happiness, just as fate alone decides which individual seeds falling from a fading cornflower finally come to rest on either fertile or stony ground.