Adam Thorpe - Ulverton

MAGNETIC RECORDING No. 24 (Transcript)

File under Broadcasts/Way of Life (B/WL)

BBC Home Service (West) ‘That Was My Day: Cartoonist Herbert Bradman talks about a very special day last month.’ 10.10 p.m. March 6th 1953

( Note : first five-and-a-half minutes lost due to magnetic tape snapping.)

[…] BANGS THE TRAY with his small hammer and the toffee cracks. Then comes the tattoo. Well, the crumbs bounce up and down as if electrified. Now I have no idea why Mr Bint must perform this tattoo with his little hammer. It makes the tray clatter frightfully. Perhaps it is in order to release the cracked toffee from the grease paper. Perhaps it is in order to make a very loud noise. One day, I will ask him. But not today. No, not today. For today is a very special day. Isn’t it, Sidney? But Mr Bint just snaps a paper bag off a hook with many other paper bags upon it, and whistles a single bar from the opening of Chopin’s B minor Sonata. At least, that is what it sounds like. And he is always whistling it. One day, I will ask him. Not today. No, not today. Meanwhile, I will continue to — well, marvel. Now come on, I hear you say, what exactly are you marvelling at? Well, dear listener, at the great strides we have made in communication by means of the wireless. Even our shopkeepers bend an ear to the Third Programme.

Mr Bint slips the dark toffee into the paper bag. He knows I cannot bear to have my fingers stickied. Who can, but grubby little creatures, as don’t know better? Talking of these, there are quite a few strung out behind me. Oh dear, I think they are rather impatient today. Well, I have never seen Bint’s Bakery so full. And that applies to the shelves, too.

‘A quarter of liquorice pomfret cakes, please, Sidney. And four acid drops.’ Do I hear a groan behind me? Someone drops their penny. Consternation. And today of all days. Do not worry, she has got it. She is called Marjorie. She has just got over the chicken-pox. But did I not see her in the Village Stores? Of course, her parents have the shop. ‘But it don’t sell sweets, sir. Just bleach.’ Just bleach? Well, that is a shame. Just bleach.

Goodness me, I have been quite distracted by little Marjorie. The liquorice pomfret cakes have tumbled into the scale-pan. What a satisfying rattle! And the smaller boys and girls think so, too. They press forward a little. A tiny grubby face pops up beside me. ‘Hurry up, mister!’ That is too much for Mr Bint. His shop is neat as any pin. It is not made for them young grubs, fresh from ditch and road, from farm and misty orchard. But he has to make a living, just like all of us. Out, all out! In a trice they are exactly that. Well, they know the ropes. But I would not wager on his windows staying clean for long. Yes, I am right. He looks at the faces smudged against the glass, then he looks at me. His look says: today, one has to make allowances. Today, it is only proper. Yes, that is the spirit, Mr Bint. That is the spirit that will see us through this anxious age, if anything will. Tolerance, I think they call it. Alive and well it is too, in our little village. Now can I have my acid drops, please?

Yes, indeed. Today, we are going to go the whole hog. I take out — well, you have guessed it: my ration book. I place it on the polished wooden counter, just as I do every time. But today, Mr Bint smiles. He knows. The liquorice pomfret cakes slide off the scale-pan into a second paper bag. What a satisfying rustle! Now I hope he does not mind me saying this, I really do, but Mr Bint has a rather impressive wart on his forehead. And at this juncture, I usually glance towards it. I usually think: well, how surprising, this inability of many people to take advantage of the considerable medical advances made in our time. To burn out a wart, or lance a carbuncle, is the least of the challenges facing medical science, under the benign auspices of our National Health Service and the many technical instruments at its command. And so on. You know the type of thing. But today is different. Today we have quite other thoughts in the head. Quite other, as Mr Bint spins the paper bag round and round to close it, and the mingling aromas of confectionary, and fleed cakes, and bags of flour, and cottage loaves, and jam doughnuts, and goodness knows what else one finds in an English country bakery seem to spin me round and round, too.

Now for the other jar. The one crammed with yellow acid drops, of course. Oh dear — the lid has been split slightly, in its long and busy career. The lid is made of Bakelite. I do not wish to cast aspersions. Oh no. But I have to say this: I do feel a sense of relief when the plastic lid is off — and most especially today. Mr Bint’s plump, floury hand squeezes through the neck. Down it goes. Viewed through the blueish glass, those fingers do resemble something rather nasty moving along the sea-bed, do they not? No, not today. Today, there is nothing nasty about it. All is glowing, all is happy. Let us rather say, it is like watching the Derby on my twelve-inch television. That is the spirit. And out those fingers come, with four acid drops … well, clawed, I have to admit it, off the congealed honeycomb. Always four. Nothing nasty about that, either.

Now comes the third paper bag, and in they go. Thud thud. Thud thud. I say, you are calling out over your cocoa, what’s all this thudding about? Ah yes. You see, Mr Bint always lets the acid drops fall from a rather extravagant height into their little paper bag. Videlicet, dear listener, if you don’t mind a bit of Latin — the full vertical stretch of his long right arm. That crisp blue cuff of his baker’s coat gets caught at the elbow, so high does he stretch up. What strange characters, you are thinking to yourself — what strange characters there are in our villages! Well, it is all for my benefit, of course: those crisp thuds send a flutter through my (I have to say) ample frame. Likewise, the faces pressed against the door flutter […] 1open under the weight. Little creatures spill onto the floor. Mr Bint sweeps them out. The door tinkles shut. We are quite alone. As should be. Never mind the faces smudged against the glass: the hour has come. The moment beckons. For the first time in our transaction, Mr Bint speaks. ‘Let’s take it from here then, Mr Bradman,’ he says, in what I understand to be a Jimmy Edwards voice. At least, that is what a little fellow told me last week. Last week: how far away that seems today, how dismal, how colourless, how empty of the vital! Hey, look out — is the hour not coming, and the moment beckoning, and so forth? I pick up my ration book and tear out several stamps. No prizes for guessing which ones, now.

‘Well, Sidney, old fellow, at least we have come through.’ I tear up those stamps into tiny pieces. I lean over the counter and scatter them over his head like confetti, standing on my toes to do so. If I were a poetic sort of chap, I’d say they fell upon his hair as the snow falls upon a glistening tilth, or some such. But as I am not, I shall stick with confetti. Mr Bint did not quite stop smiling. He saw the joke. Of course he did. As did the youngsters outside, from the sound of it. After all, I did thereupon purchase, in celebration of this memorable day for all we sweet-toothed folk, a dozen more acid drops and as many aniseed balls, one pound weight of liquorice allsorts, one shilling’s worth extra of Mrs Dorothy Bint’s luscious dark toffee, a clutch of barley-sugar sticks, a giant bag of mint humbugs, and an elegant box of a certain well-known store’s aptly-named ‘Regal’ milk chocolates. And I am quite sure that there was enough left for the little ones outside. Quite sure. But I do not suppose he remembered to pick out that confetti from his hair before he let the hordes in with that familiar merry tinkle of the door. Never mind. This has been a happy day. A very happy chewing, and sucking, and munching, and tearing-up-of-stamps sort of day. Indeed it has. Not for you? Look, I have two mint humbugs left. Oh, come on then: you can have one, too.