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along the lane to where the village lay at the crossroads with the Great Road.
    “Don’t be long,” she says to me. “I need those scones this afternoon. Just get them and come straight back.”
    “Yes yes,” I says to her. “For dear sake woman don’t fuss like a great lilty.”
    No I didn’t really. I just says, “Certainly marm,” and took the pennies she give me. Then I made her a nice curtsey and off I went. She had been so lovely to me all morning, I had almost forgot how strange she had acted the night before.
    Cowburnhill, I was not happy about Cowburnhill at all, there was cowpats up to your wishbone but luckily that day the cows themselves was all in the next field. The sky was the colour of the stirabout I had ate for breakfast but there was no wind and it wasn’t too cold. As I walked along, I sang out loud the song I was making up, but it wasn’t finished yet, I only had two verse and a chorus.
    After a while the lane passed a small field in the middle of which was a man bent over looking at the soil. I stopped singing as soon as I seen him, I had no wish to draw attention to myself. But as I went past he straightened up and stared at me. He was short and slightly built and he spat constantly. I was later to learn that this was Biscuit Meek, one of the farm servants. By the outraged expression on his face and the way his hands clenched up into fists you would have thought I was old Nabs himself taking a dander down the lane. I give him a wave and a good afternoon, seeing as he might be my new neighbour. In response he hawked up a great oyster and gobbed it on the earth but by the looks of him that was only his next spit among what might be thousands that day so it would be unfair to say it was directed at me with malice.
    Thank flip the lane soon took a curve and sloped down the hill behind a hedge. It was a relief to get out his sight. Before too long, I came into the village. In those days, before the new pits opened, it was a smaller place than now, inhabited mainly by miners and weavers, their dwellings clustered around the Cross and straggling for some distance along either side of the Great Road. I looked about me for a coffee house or other place of entertainment but was to be sore disappointed. Granted, there was a tavern at one end of the village called The Gushet and a small hotel just up the road from the Cross—the Swan Inn. But apart from that the only points of interest were an old smithy and the one shop that served as baker, grocer and post office combined. There was about
1/2
a dozen dirty children playing in the street, two mangy dogs and a few horses and carts and pony traps sitting here and there. Not even a theatre or a dance hall for a hooley, the only hall had a big sign up that showed it was reserved for the masonics, The Free Gardeners. I was most deflated. I seen in the shop window that there was a
Soiree
advertised but on closer inspection this proved to have taken place the previous month in another village called Smoller. Even though I could have murdered a few jars, I walked past both the tavern and the hotel without going in. My first day on the job it would be a disaster to roll up in a state of elevation. Besides, I had no wish to displease the missus, she had give me a fair start.
    Inside the shop smelled of sweeties and tobacco and milk gone off and it was empty except for a bald-pated man behind the counter this was AP Henderson the grocer. What did he do when I give him good afternoon but fold his arms across his watch chain and stare up at the rafters, yawning. I had met his type before and knew just to ignore any snash, I got straight to the point.
    “Have you any scones there, mister?” I says and just then I seen them in a glass case on the counter but before I could ask for them Henderson shook his head.
    “No,” says he. “Nae scones.”
    I looked at him astounded then pointed at the case. “What about those there?”
    “These are reserved,” he