But I am more
than that. I have seen God.
JOCK-AT-A-VENTURE
I
All this happened at a Martinmas Fair in Bursley, long ago in the
fifties, when everybody throughout the Five Towns pronounced Bursley
"Bosley" as a matter of course; in the tedious and tragic old times,
before it had been discovered that hell was a myth, and before the
invention of pleasure or even of half-holidays. Martinmas was in those
days a very important moment in the annual life of the town, for it was
at Martinmas that potters' wages were fixed for twelve months ahead, and
potters hired themselves out for that term at the best rate they could
get. Even to the present day the housewives reckon chronology by
Martinmas. They say, "It'll be seven years come Martinmas that Sal's
babby died o' convulsions." Or, "It was that year as it rained and
hailed all Martinmas." And many of them have no idea why it is
Martinmas, and not Midsummer or Whitsun, that is always on the tips of
their tongues.
The Fair was one of the two great drunken sprees of the year, the other
being the Wakes. And it was meet that it should be so, for intoxication
was a powerful aid to the signing of contracts.
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