EVERY MORNING AT TEN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 421, 18 July 1947, Page 20

EVERY MORNING AT TEN

Written for "The Listener"

by

RITA

ATKINSON

S far as I am concerned going for the mail each morning is quite a ritual. No postman whistles as he leaves letters in the box by the gate-way in our village, but, instead one must go off along the road to the store where, in its deepest, darkest corner, is a small partitioned cubby-hole which is our post office. : I walk down behind our high hedge, under the oaks and thence to the road. Always at this point my head turns to Mt. Egmont. At the corner I may meet old Mrs. Ardrey who brings, once a week, her basket of eggs to the store. As the owner of three hens, she says it is not worth her while to send her surplus to the egg floor. | "Nice morning," she'll smile. "Look at Egmont! Isn’t it a fine sight? The hens are picking up, too. I got two eggs this morning." Or I may meet Mr. Sawyer who will walk with me and tell me how his cows are milking. "It’s a funny thing, you know," he’ll explain. "But the three-teater that I nearly threw out of the herd last year is my best milker now, though that heifer that has just come in is going to be pretty good. Her mother’s mother was Anna of Posha and she took the Cup ‘at the show four years ago for the best -milker. On her father’s side there’s good blood, too. I was expecting something from that heifer, and I don’t think I’m going to be disappointed." bi * % ‘THE store is not at all prepossessing. There is no shop window display. On one side the glass window space has been painted green to save any other unnecessary decoration, while that across the way is usually in a state of semiundress, it’s main attraction being the local notices: "A Dance Will Be Held ..." "Fire Wood for Sale .. ." "Wanted to buy, Good Cattle Dog .. ." "Lost, outside the local hall, Blue Brooch, Keepsake." Such notices, written or printed by a number of different hands, are obligingly stuck up with specks of stamp paper by the storekeeper,. No neat pyramids of bottles, tins, or packets, no colourful posters or advertisements greet your eye as you enter the building. Across the ceiling a number of rods are slung, and appended to these ate the oddest assortment of articles. Men’s working pants hang beside saucepans, hobnail boots and shining tin billies; frying pans, fish slices, slippers, hanks of rope, dog chains and kettles mix indiscriminately and sociably. The main counter (there are two of them-one along the side and one along the end of the shop, the latter serving as a store bench) is flanked at one end by various half-made-up parcels and at the other by a glass case in which repose, if they have not already been ordered or sold, doughnuts. and sponge rolls, which the baker leaves. monotonously with the bread earlier in the morning. Every soul in our district knows the baker’s cooking. ("My dear, she’s terribly lazy. Too lazy to cook, in fact. I went to visit her the other day and all she had were buttered doughnuts and sponge roll, and it was perfectly obvious where she got them!") The other counter holds the mounds of bread, both large loaves arid small. Appropriately, a cheese stands close by, while the weighing scales and bacon

cutter leer at the bacon standing in a glass case beside them. Next door, poked away in a corner, its opening flanked by coils of wire, pot cleaners, and other odds and ends, is the post office. Its pigeonholes are usually crammied full, for those whose names start with the leter A. have the -first. box, the B’s the second, and so on. If you receive a large amount of mail including parcels, magazines, and papers, then one of the buckets from the shop is brought round, your mail is deposited therein, and the lot pushed » eed te counter. * "pJULLor" you are greeted. "How are you?" There is a hurried sorting of mail in the box bearing your initial and

then a wofried frown. "Now I’m sure there was mail for you this morning. What can have happened to it? John, where is all the mail? I’m sure there was something for you. Peter, do you know what happened to all the letters? Ah, here it is, under the counter. And just look at it! There’d be enough to last me a year here. Have you heard from your mother lately? How is she? And that little niece of yours who fell over and cut her lip open? All healed again? Ah, that’s good. Aha! I can see you'll be dropping letters and papers all the way home if I let you go like that. Just a minute and I'll pop out the back and get my basket to lend you. You’ve got to get your bread yet, don’t forget. Biscuits? No, none yet, But we hope to have some tomorrow." She leans confidentially near, "We've got some cakes of chocolate, though. You'll have one, I expect, though if you don’t mind me saying so, it is wasted on you. It doesn’t put an ounce of weight on you, does it? Wish I could say the same." "Hullo, missus! How yer doin’?" a big voice blares behind me and I turn to. see our district odd-job man beaming toothlessly at me. ("Had me teeth out 20 years and more ago. Gums as hard as nails. Can eat anything with them. Look!" he’ll declare, opening {his mouth wide for inspection and rubbing a grimy finger along his "hard-as-nails" gums. "What do I want false teeth for? Be a waste of money, that’s all!") I assure him that I’m very well and ask after his health.

"Got my rheumatics to-day. That’s why I’m not at work. Expect Bob McInnes is wondering where I am, too... He was expecting me to-day. But this changeable weather’s tough on us old jokers!" "Hullo!" . another voice calls. "Out enjoying.the fresh ‘air? Hdw’s-your cold? Better? That’s good. I meant to come over to see how you were getting on, but bless me if Jenny didn’t go down with a bilous attack and one of our

cows got sick and Jim was up and down to her all night. What with him bobbin’ in and out and Jenny vomiting all over the Place I had a rare treat, I can tell you.’ "TI hope they are better now," I. tell her. "Oh yes! ’Course Jenny, gets these bilious attacks every mow and then. Little wretch eats too much I always say, so I didn’t worry over her so much, but that cow was valuable so Jim and I were a-bit worried over her. She’s all right again now, though, thank goodness." a : * % | T this moment a small smudge-nosed child appears through the door and, marching to the counter asks, without preliminaries, "Have ‘yer got any tobacco, Dad says?" ‘ "No. No tobacco!" The shopkeeper smiles weakly at her until she disappears and then runs his fingers through his hair and almost shouts at us, "Tobacco! Tobacco! Every day she comes to ask for tobacco »end everybody knows I get supplied puly twice a month.-I’m supposed torbe. a magician and conjure up ev wants out of the air." The odd-job man looks at him thoughtfully a moment and then says, "So you ain’t got no tobacco, eh? Well, that’s too bad. Wanted a bit to smoke meself to-day. Got my rheumatics again, yer know, and can’t work. Smoke more (continued on. next page)

Eee ESS (continued from previous page) tobacco when I don’t work. Haven’t yer even got a bit of pipe tobacco, eh?" "No," the shopkeeper says wearily. "Not even pipe tobacco." "And no cigarettes? I hoped I'd get a couple of packets, anyway," says one of the younger, brighter members of the community. "Sorry! Sold the last packet yesterday!" "Ah well, give us a couple of packets of chewing gum. Got to have something." "Now these’ shortages could’ be stopped. If they did like I'll tell you..." and, as happens almost every morning, we are soon involved in a weighty discussion of, first, our own country’s affajrs, and then, with «a hop, a step, and a ump, the whole world’s business. For, ‘Kile the unheeding dash along the ‘main road beyond to larger, more busi-ness-like centres, we, surrounded as we are by a large measure of beauty and peace, find time to discuss the problems of the world and, I think, almost solve them in our considering, leisurely way. % * x AM sure world leaders, politicians, financiers, and other lesser men could well come to listen in to some of our

— / discussions, for usually, at mail times, | quite a crowd collects and it is then that | politics, atom discoveries, and affairs of | national importance receive our consid- | eration. Very, very seldom does anyone | get upset or temperamental, and often | marvel that such differences of opinion | can arise without tempers being lost. | Perhaps the cool fresh air from the | mountain has a quietening effect, for never, in any other place, have I heard such contradictions of thought talked over with such interest and such appreciation of the fact that all men have a right to their own ideas. Usually I set forth expecting that I shall be home again within a quarter of an hour, but often, by the time I have greeted all those I meet by the wayside, joined in one or two friendly arguments, collected my mail, bread, and other needs, I am lucky if I return before an hour. "Such a waste of time," I sigh, knowing that I should have been home doing the many jobs that await me. And yet, on Saturdays and Sundays, when the store is closed and no mail comes to our small hamlet, how I miss my morning’s outing with its socia] contacts and cheery greetings.