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went up ‘Colliers’ Pad’, a leafy and narrow bridle-path that ran by an open space of undulating scrubland known as the Cherry Orchard, a way that was often used by miners going home from Radford or Wollaton Pits.
    Burton never thought of himself as an urban man, even when his house was on the actual city limits and he could find himself in Nottingham—so to speak—simply by walking to the end of the yard. There were still many fields to cross before coming to the packed houses of Old Radford and the first lively outlying pubs of the city. He watched them from behind the fence, as if daring them to come up and get him. He couldn’t be doing nothing for long, however, and before going back to what work there was he ceased his gazing and suddenly, to spite the lane a few yards away as well as shock it, he gobbed into the middle, and then turned his back on it. This gesture was characteristic, a spit at the bars of the fire to hear it sizzle, or down into the lane to pay it back for never moving. The fire was unbeatable as far as his saliva was concerned, but the lane couldn’t answer back. There was no contempt in his spitting. It was just an eternal testing of the forces of nature to make sure they were always as he expected them to be. Satisfied that they were, he could then go back to his work.
    On Saturday night he donned his best suit. In fact he had two, which seemed an unparalleled luxury compared to the state of my own father at the time. There was a black one and a brown one—with boots to match each, of the sort that laced high and covered the ankles. Their good-quality leather glistened from the shine I had just given them as, in the chosen pair, he made his way down the dry or muddy lane, according to season, and on under the long tunnel-like railway bridge whose darkness at six o’clock on gloomy winter mornings had so much frightened my mother on her way to the lace factory in Nottingham where she worked from the age of fourteen.
    Burton would stop at the beer-off in Radford Woodhouse for his first pint, then go on by the disused lime kilns up to Wollaton Road. His son Oswald lived in a cottage near the junction, and he would call in to see if everything was all right, then continue the two-mile walk into Nottingham. In his own world he was without fear, and he despised anyone who was not the same, though he would occasionally condescend to talk to them for reasons of work or business. Those who were similar in stature might be lucky to get a passing nod from time to time, for he was exceedingly conscious of his height, and held himself accordingly.
    As a child I once caught a glimpse of him at a saloon bar when someone going in opened the pub door. Burton was standing up, talking to other men, the upper half of his tankard arm held well into his side, the beer pot straight at his mouth when he drank, though the stance and picture was by no means a stiff one. Then I dodged out of sight in case he should see me.
    At Sunday dinner a quart bottle would be set on the table, which only he was allowed to drink. If his grown-up sons wanted to take beer at the same meal they had to go and buy a pint of their own, though they could only bring a glass to the table, never the actual bottle. If they did there would be ructions which would end in them getting knocked down if they didn’t take it away.
    He’d send me out on Sunday morning to the Woodhouse for his ale, and I remember the smell of it as the handsome but hurried young woman at the beer-off poured it into the white enamel funnel she held over the bottle. He once rewarded me with a glass when I got back, though I should have known there was some trick in it, for he was delighted when I staggered away from the meal half drunk. On another occasion he tempted me to a pinch of snuff, which set me sneezing around the house and yard for hours. I was one of the few who appreciated his sense of humour, for he was universally