Country Moods and Tenses by Edith Olivier

Author:Edith Olivier [Olivier, Edith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan

THE FOURTH MOOD

SUBJUNCTIVE

1 Buying and Selling

I MEAN TO CONSIDER THE SUBJUNCTIVE AS THE MOOD OF personal contacts, and, from very primitive days, barter seems to have been the first of these; while buying and selling have always been looked upon as an excuse for pleasure. Fairs and markets were for centuries the chief social functions, and though fairs have lost their position as practically the only occasions for general conviviality, market days have not yet been superseded by anything else. A market town is still a provincial metropolis, in every county it is there that local life is focused, and the whole countryside converges once a week upon its market town. The County Magistrates generally sit near the market place, so that men can freely pass from one kind of business to the other. Wives accompany their husbands to “town” for a good day’s shopping—not, as formerly, in the phæton, the gig or the tax-cart, but now in the motor-car. And working people from the villages, who used to fill the carriers’ carts, now ride by motor-bus. At about four o’clock in the afternoon of market day, one of the chief sights of a market town is the setting forth of those great fleets of buses. For an hour or so beforehand, the passengers have been assembling, laden with baskets and parcels and “ shopping bags”, bubbling with gossip and local jokes, and distracted by the loss of a child or two, or by the non-appearance of an expected parcel. At last everyone is aboard, and the great vehicle swings slowly out of its harbour, to feel its way through the traffic, which is organized by rule-of-thumb rather than by any of the better known traffic laws.

There was a memorable scene in Salisbury one market day, a year or two ago, when a new bus station was to be opened. The ceremony began with a luncheon in the Council House, and then the Mayor of Salisbury, and I, as Mayor of Wilton, proceeded formally to declare the station open. We crossed the market place at the head of a small procession, which grew rapidly as the assembled people caught sight of our dignity and our chains, and eventually arrived on the scene at the head of a considerable crowd. Our first business was to cut two coloured ribbons which had been stretched across the entrance to the station, and then there immediately appeared the first bus which was to use it. In order to prevent delay, this had filled up at its old starting-point, and it was already crowded with passengers for Andover. They had no idea they were going to take part in any function. There they sat in their places, hugging their parcels, and staring out of the windows with astonishment at what must have looked to them like an unruly crowd of rioters waiting to spring upon them. Perhaps they were reassured by finding that this mob was headed by two Mayors in their robes, each holding aloft a pair of grape scissors.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.