I must say, it was the weirdest outing ever. I can try to laugh about it now but really, it just reinforced all my early fears about not getting into things where you can’t see a clear way out. (I completely blame the Brothers Grimm for this, what with Hansel and Gretel having such a close encounter with an oven – nightmare).
Dilly, my sister, (Delia, but she hates the name)and I live far apart so we take the occasional weekends together and meet up for hotel stays, meals out, the odd show and whatever we fancy.
We’re both stuck, in our different ways. Dilly is stuck in a lack lustre relationship without the energy to move on. I’ve come out the other side of all that, and am now stuck with the upbringing of two teenagers and a barely affordable mortgage.
The day I’m talking about was a bit grey. After a nice lunch we wandered towards a nearby park and Dilly saw an advert for the park’s maze. ‘A-maze yourself by escaping from this fiendish labyrinth’. That was enough for me to dig my heels in. Even the ‘L’ word triggered traumatic memories of Gretel and that poor, imprisoned Minotaur. Dilly, however, possibly encouraged by a good lunch and not a few glasses of wine, was equally determined to experience the maze, and joined the short queue.
‘See you in the tea bar when you’ve escaped,’ I walked away feeling churlish but pleased I had a book with me.
How long could it take to finish the maze experience? An hour seemed adequate, so I tried to phone Dil. No reply. Left a message to call. No response. Maybe the thick yew disrupts signals? Sent a text just in case it doesn’t.
The what-ifs rapidly set in. What if someone was lurking ready to attack, maybe with an axe? What if the maze was so complicated some people never got found? What if Dilly had touched a poisonous plant and died? What if a witch wanted to put her in an oven and eat her – no, be realistic about the border between life and fairy tale.
Deep breath. The chap selling tickets couldn’t have been less helpful. However he was quite anxious to get home for the night so offered to let me into the maze to look for my poor, lost sister. No question, he was the responsible person here, so he was forced to set off in search of Dilly.
In the end, and it couldn’t have been more than 10 minutes, I could hear a shooshing sound of people brushing against branches. The ticket seller emerged leading my groggy looking sister.
‘What happened Dill?’
‘Your sister was sound asleep, snoring’ the ticket chap said with some disgust. ‘She’s lucky not to be locked in all night’.
It wasn’t Dil’s finest hour, so we moved away fast. I think she probably realizes the importance of the escape plan. Back to our locked in lives we go.
