Field notebook, first season

FIELD NOTEBOOK ONE. T. A. Calder. Entries kept nightly, written up on the Sunday.

12 March. Admitted to the meeting after eight weeks of asking. Nineteen present, of whom fourteen are subscribers and five are wives of subscribers who do the accounts and are not called officers. I was introduced as a man writing a book, which I did not correct.

14 March. The society exists to bury its members decently and to keep the mortcloth. Subscription is quarterly. It has done this, on its own account, since a date nobody in the room could give me and nobody thought it strange not to be able to give.

3 May. First funeral attended. Six bearers, in two ranks of three, the rota kept by the treasurer in a hard-backed book. The rota is followed exactly and out of it comes a great deal of the society's peace: no man is asked and no man may refuse, and so no offence is possible.

3 May, later. Seven pairs of gloves were issued at the door of the hall and seven pairs were returned to the box after. I counted at the door because I was standing there and had nothing else to do. I record this because I am recording everything in the first season; it is not yet a question.

17 June. Asked the treasurer about the gloves. He said the box holds seven pairs and always has. I asked whether the seventh pair was a spare. He said you could call it that.

9 August. Second funeral. Six bearers. Seven pairs out, seven pairs back. The seventh pair is not clean when it comes back, and neither are the other six, and I do not know what to do with that observation, so I am writing it down and leaving it.

2 November. End of season. I have watched a small, competent, unsentimental body of men and women bury four of their own without a word of ceremony that was not strictly necessary. Whatever else is here, that is here, and I would not want the rest of the notebook to obscure it.