The Butcher, The Baker....

...and the Oil Slick Maker!

Odd but true I am that one, the very maker of oil slicks to complement those other worthy and more established trades and crafts.

I have not forsaken the pastoring of souls for the captaining of tankers only to run them aground off Scarpa Flow or any such matter. I am though, if still incumbent as before, indelibly - note that word for it will come back to haunt me! - marked down as the one upon whom to call should ever the need for a goodly sized oil slick ever arise. As I doubt it shall. Indeed hope it won't in my time or vicinity, for I can assure you that one oil slick is one too many for any reasonable village locale.

It came about thus. Though first, before retelling the tale I needs must put the oleaginous matter in its proper context. When God created The Wolds - some short time after he had earlier practised by creating the rest of our goodly planet Earth - He decreed, as He might well, that there should be at least a single representative of every required art, craft and trade readily to hand. One per village was to be the normative distribution, making for a pleasant life for all.

Roof need mending? Call then at once on the services of John Thatcher resident of Mill Lane, where also dwelt - reasonably as it was by the mill itself - Mick Miller, close cousin to and of Geraldine Loaf, wife of Farmer Giles who were friends of Bill Brewer, etc., etc., etc. Generation would pass the secret of the craft unto generation - the usual father to son number though with the odd variant, we having a fine female carpenter and joiner at present in our midst - so that one could know that if George was one's waggoner then George's great-grandfather would too have been waggoner to one's own equivalent ancestor.

Quite reassuring to know that there was skill deep bred in the blood. Perhaps less happy the thought that George's great-grandson would one day be taken his due and decided place among the axles and the staves, if only because the fellow just might wish to be having other thoughts on the matter of a chosen career or indeed life.

You get the picture I am sure. On occasions down the centuries there may have been more than the allotted one person per craft, which did open the sometimes difficult can of worms of competition, leading to deep felt loyalties, adherences and sometimes even the spot of inter-craft feuding. Should then Mick's flour be off on any one day, then Sid Millerson from across the river would be the first to be suspected of sabotage. That poor Sid had not been quite the man he had been since that unfortunate accident when smacked on the head one of his mill sails - an 'accident my foot' according to Sid's people of course! - did little if anything to dampen the suspicions of Mick's folk.

Could be tricky all that, but we managed in our way. The one craft and trade where competition for local custom was legion was, mercifully, in the one matter where it did not matter - the brewing and the selling of ale. The logic was and is simple. When fifty thirsty souls require a decent seat for an evening pie and pint, there is little to be gained for any if all of them were to attempt to pile in together chez Ma Fuller's back parlour. Simply no room for all or any fun for any. But put ten down there, another twenty down the lane at Zachary's barn, with the rest making do with some benches outside of the Parson's Cook's kitchen and all will be well.

And from that necessary distribution and dissemination of custom arose other goodly and fine things, such as friendly rivalry on the field of sport and play. The 'pub team' was born, requiring continual and intense training and practice, the hard raising and wise - or not - spending of subscriptions, any number of committees to determine rules and watertight processes of appeal to the governing body should a 'ringer' be discovered in the opposing team or some such. And so forth and so forth.

Even on occasions resulting all this activity in an actual 'match' between two teams of the finest darts throwers, or bowls bowlers, or half-pennies shovers. Weeks of frantic preparation, agonies over team selection and discussion of tactics and then the day itself where legends were born and reputations made or lost. Weeks after of post-mortems, analysis and tall-tale telling, avoidance or otherwise of blame, the championing of success - much ale - or the equally thirsty drowning of sorrows.

Kept the men mostly off the streets and out of the houses of the womenfolk, an accomplishment generally of no less appeal to either street or womenfolk, both of whom being thus left largely in more peace than otherwise would be been their lot and portion in life.

What today would be called 'social cohesion', though we called it rather normal village life. But then of course it has all now changed, and not largely - as ever - for the better. Post-War saw the beginning - the First and then in turn for the generation of the Second - an uprootedness and a restlessness. Sons no longer would only follow fathers' footsteps and trades, daughters mothers'. A good moving in many ways, a stretching and a stirring, seeking something more beyond.

Too broad a story the decline of the English village in this respect, but simple truth that where once there was one of each - a butcher, a baker and even a candlestick maker - close to hand, those days are gone. Lucky indeed - as we are - the place that has some one remain, who can and does seek to offer more than the one in the hope of providing something for the many.

And thus our butcher. Seeing the demise of the grocery shop, the greengrocer, the baker in all of fewer than ten years, the butcher is pleased to supplement his selection of meats cooked and uncooked, not just with pies and the odd tin of soup, but with coffee, loo paper, cereals, jams, fresh - mostly - vegetables and near on an hundred other items a household might need. No alcohol and no newspapers, but those aside more or less enough for any family to survive at a generous pinch.

But then a year past, something of a fine yet troubling revolution. For a disused confectionery shop was overnight re-invented as a smart new baker's, with a wondrous selection of loaves of many countries. All right, most of the English or the French kind, but nonetheless it was grand once more to catch the scent of freshly baked breads of a morning's stroll.

Grand for all that is if not seen from the shopfront of said butcher, who at a trice watched a significant portion of his multitudinous trade skip out of his doorway and around the corner straight into the new baker's shop. A pound and a half of braising steak might remain safe in his hands, but the useful addition to his till-roll of 'three large cob and a small granary' has gone.

Thank goodness - the very Almighty himself even - for that corner. Had the new baker been in clear sightline of the butcher's shop I had hardly dare entered the place for fear of hurting dear Sydney and Son, purveyors of best beef and pork to the Rector these many a year. But round the corner it is, so I am largely safe in first purchasing the meats for the day then disappearing from view to pick up the breads. (The baker doesn't mind one bit this order of play - she doesn't do sausages after all!)

Then the other day it all went horribly wrong - and here we are beginning at last to close in on to the matter of the oil slick. For clever Syd and Son, having calculated that it is little gained if a man has his meat yet not the means of cooking it, have taken to selling olive oil as one of their many sidelines. And thus this fateful day one left Syd behind with two heaving bags of produce, including five pound best spuds, three or more tins of this and that and the centrally significant item: bottle, half-litre, oil, olive.

Entering the baker for necessary supplementary bread products presented no difficulties whatsoever. Purchase of same, none the more. It was though on exiting the premises that a loud smash as of glass smiting pavement caught my ever eager ear as herald of disaster. For yes, the butcher's wafer-thin plastic bag had sundered dashing the bottle and its oil to the ground, where now it lay in an ever widening circle on the very front step of the baker's shop, all encrusted with shards of broken glass.

I must say the ladies of the place were wondrous at once. Hardly had the awful sound of smashing ceased than they were on the case with paper towels, and cleaning fluids and mops and sympathy and so forth; my ineffectual contribution to the ablutions being no more than ceaseless apologies and witterings about 'mind your hands on that glass'.

Eventually - well soon really - it was time to flee the scene of the crime, thinking it not unreasonable to make a return call upon the butcher to mention - and no more - in a spirit of public concern the inadequacy of his plastic bags. Immediate restitution was proffered and accepted - more oil that is not another bag - and the tale could have ended there, had I not been so foolish as to mention the very spot where the oil had landed.

"On the baker's front step?", they cried as one in glee at the discomfiture of their rival. Not highly charitable a sentiment, but understandable if not entirely excusable. But then the killer blow. "So you were just passing by then Rector?" said Son of Syd with a certain interrogatory stance. And at once of course I knew what lay behind the question. Not a matter of the convenience of fate that had dumped my oil where they would most wish it to be dumped if it had to be at all, but rather a soul-piercing inquisition of my loyalty to them.

Had I, as it were, been consorting with the enemy was what Son of Syd wished to know. Well, he may have wished to know it, but blowed if I was about to tell it. Certainly not to his face and most assuredly not when his hand clasped as it did one of the keenest boning knives mankind can craft!

So I have made my oil slick - it's not a trade I shall adopt, just stick to the one I think - and I must pray no one, not least me, takes a tumble in it. You can see it still as a dark shadow on the paving. It will last for years. Oh dear!