Dewy Spider Webs On Holly Bushes

A Memory of Ilkeston.

It was September of 1942 when first I spied a dewy spider web gleaming in the sunlight of the morning as I entered on my first day at the Ilkeston County Secondary School. I in short trousers was suddenly seized and pitched into the holly bush on which it hung but then no more as my impact shuddered the leaves to give up their delicately woven burden. Whenever I see a dewy spider web on holly bushes in Autumn I recall that first day in my new school with its ritual of 'hollybushing'.