COUNTRY LIFE PETER QUINCE
I came across an old country guide the other day. It listed all the tradesmen in each village in my part of the country, and it seas impressive to see the great variety of services which were available on one's own doorstep in the late Victorian countryside. One modest-sized village had its resident tailor and shoemaker, its thatcher and its tiler, its saddler and its blacksmith, its chim- ney sweep, its carpenter, its carrier—all in addition, of course, to the usual comple-. ment of butcher, baker, chandler and so on.
Nowadays a superficial traveller in rural England might conclude that the only vil- lage tradesmen still flourishing were either selling frozen food to the inhabitants or selling antiques to visitors. Nevertheless, this would really be a false impression. Admittedly there has been a contraction of village commerce, but its vigour is still remarkable.
Our local grocer's shop, for example, is actually expanding in spite of the competi- tion from supermarkets in the nearest town. Women sensibly prefer to go there and exchange the local news while doing their shopping, instead of queueing up anony- mously at a supermarket. And the pro- prietor knows well that personal service has a substantial cash. value.
His prices may be a bit higher than those in the town, but he will deliver anything at any time. His assistants think nothing of bicycling down the village street in their lunch hour to take a piece of cheese to an old age pensioner who sent her order by word of mouth with a friend who happened to be passing. The more affluent customers telephone their shopping lists and the goods are on their doorsteps within an hour. They have-only to hint at a fancy for some com- modity outside the usual stock and the grocer, a rubicund and Pickwickian figure, instantly adds it to his repertoire.
The village gains from this sort of enter- prise, of course. But I also find it pleasing to contemplate because a village shop offers one of the few ways in which a modest in- dividualist can still get along in the world without attaching himself to the big bat- talions of industry or commerce. Most of the village shopkeepers I know, at any rate, are decidedly individualist in their ways. For example, our shoemaker
II hesitate to say cobbler) is a formidable figure: a thick-set, irascible man whom children treat with marked respect, know- ing that an ill-judged word can provoke an angry eruption at any time. He stares with smouldering contempt at the pairs of cheap, mass-produced shoes taken to him for re- pair: has it come to this, he seems' to be saying, that he, a craftsman, should have (0 waste his skills upon such trash? But we all know he will in fact do excellent work upon them. And he makes beautiful shoes for those who can afford such luxury.
Nowadays we miss our village baker, who vet dressed, for unexplained reasons, in riding breeches) used to deliver his products in a decrepit van. But even more, I am afraid, do we miss his delectable bread, which belonged to another gastronomic universe altogether from that of the pulpy, tasteless stuff supplied by the bread factories. (I have sometimes suspected that the waxed paper they wrap their loaves in might have more flavour than the dismal contents.)
If the baker's retirement has left a void in our village life, the mere thought of the postmaster's departure is enough to threaten the whole community's existence with total standstill. He is indispensable: a fount of local knowledge and good advice, an un- official employment agency. a patient guide through the intricacies of official forms and pension documents, a churchwarden and a key man at all local events, the inevitable choice for treasurer of the annual fête and the organising genius of the bowls club.
He is, in short, a living demonstration of one price the community will pay for mak- ing higher education available to all who can profit from it. His clear intelligence, had it been given the chance when he was young, would have carried him far above the level of a village post office. Denied Such a chance by the circumstances of his youth, it has stayed at the service of his village: his loss, our gain.
I notice that most people seem to find a reason to visit the post office several times a week, no doubt for the refreshment of its atmosphere of competence and order. Equally, the village ironmonger is visited with perhaps greater frequency than is strictly necessary; in this case the refresh- ment is of a different kind. What one re- ceives from him, in addition to the goods one purchases, is a bracing blast of sheer, unquenchable enthusiasm.
His shop is perpetually in a state of splendid chaos, almost all its space filled up with wares stacked in tumultuous con- fusion. From the doorway the customer edges past an insecure mountain of hose- pipe, garden tools, pots and pans, tins of paint, packets of seed, sacks of fertiliser and much more besides. He states his needs across a further barricade of assorted mer- chandise. But incredibly enough, what he asks for never seems to be among the vast array of goods in the shop. It is always in 'the store' at the back.
It is true that if you are buying some- thing fragile—a pane of glass, or a piece of crockery—the experience is rather nerve- racking. But no one ever leaves the shop without a sense of having come through some boisterous and invigorating experience. You can't say that about a supermarket.
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