COUNTRY LIFE
WALKING home and coming downhill into a little village. I paused a few minutes to take in the map of the countryside defined by lights of cottages, travelling cars and a far-off bus, and noticed a brightly- lit object that came along the road to the village beneath. It reached the centre of the group of houses long before I did, and its arrival was marked by the ringing of a bell. I hurried on, thinking it was some odd form of entertainment, and was surprised to discover it was a mobile fish-and-chip shop. Village children crowded about it in the half-light. The awful fume of cooking oil spread, and spoiled the sweeter air, and half-a-dozen people came hurrying from their houses in answer to the summons of the bell. Here was a piece of the town come out into the quietness of the village, where a stream ran under a bridge and bats flew about the church-tower. It was a real piece of civilisation, for a burly man in a somewhat greasy white coat struggled with boiling oil and potatoes, and ladled pieces of fish from the fat to the racks above, perspiring like someone in a Turkish bath as he did so. The chip-shop's odour drifted after me for half a mile, but soon I was going through a fir-wood, listening to an owl and forgetting that the village cried out for the amenities of the town, even to the chip-shop and its reek.
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