Ribbons over the grass

An original literary non-fiction-style account of watching a maypole rehearsal before a village event.

The ribbons hung straight when nobody held them. Red, yellow and blue made a bright, uncomplicated skirt around the pole. On the grass below, a dozen people arranged themselves into something much less certain. A woman with a clipboard asked those carrying red to move two places to the left. Three people moved. She looked at them and began counting again.

The first attempt lasted almost half a circuit. Then a yellow ribbon passed under a blue one which had expected to go underneath it. Two dancers stopped, the people behind them continued, and the pattern acquired a knot shaped like polite disagreement. Nobody pulled. The woman with the clipboard asked everyone to remain where they were while she traced the trouble back through the line.

From the path, the colours still looked attractive. Close to the pole, a man was explaining that he had followed the person in front. The person in front said she had followed him. A child between them kept his ribbon raised and watched the woman’s finger moving along the crossed strands. When she asked him to step backwards, he did so with enormous care.

They began again more slowly. This time the dancers looked towards one another instead of towards the audience which was not yet there. The ribbons started to form a repeating band around the pole. Footsteps flattened the grass into a pale circle, less colourful than the pattern above but equally clear about where everyone had been.

At the end, the woman lowered her clipboard. The dancers looked up, almost surprised by what they had made. One man asked whether they could leave it like that. She said they would need to undo it before tomorrow. For a moment, the completed pattern seemed the simplest part of the job.

How does the writer present the effort behind the maypole’s colourful pattern?