The flower bringers

[bunn]

You know how you often see flowers attached to a road sign or a tree by the road, placed in memory, one assumes, of someone dead in a road accident?

I've never actually seen anyone putting them up, but I had vaguely wondered about them. I'd envisaged, perhaps, a pair of mourning parents, or a desolate deserted Significant Other, perhaps supported by a friend.

Today I saw the flower bringers. There were about 10 of them, all men in their early 20's, and rather tanned, all on foot, faces very serious, walking along a roadside in a loose group, with the two people who were holding bouquets at the front. As I drove past them, they arrived at a road sign and began to tie the flowers to it.  I almost stopped and took a photo of them, but didn't quite have the nerve. 

Comments

[puddleshark.livejournal.com]

A road-racing cyclist was killed on the main road near here a month or so ago. Someone, friends or family, chained a bike painted entirely a ghostly white to a roadsign and covered it with flowers... It's both touching, and a little eerie.

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

It's a lot worse when you can put a face and a name to the memorial.

The 'ghost bike' has become a standard memorial for dead cyclists these days. I think RoadPeace started the trend.

I was doing a survey just past Fort William a couple of years back. I took J with me - as we drove along, we remembered that a famous Scots racing cyclist - Jason Macintyre- was killed on that same road when some idiot drivers pulled out of a junction in front of him. He was carried along on the vehicle for several hundred yards before they even knew they'd hit him. He left a wife and young family. If I remember right, one of the kids was disabled - he was the sole breadwinner in a family where his wife stayed home as carer.

We were just talking about him that day when we drove past the 'ghost bike' which had been left to comemmorate his death.

It was one of those goose-bumpy, 'someone's walked over your grave' moments...