CALDER/85-02
Interview extract, approved by the speaker
- Kind:
- Oral history
- Date:
- 22 January 1985
- Origin:
- North House
- Access:
- Open.
The one interview passage the depositor was given leave to keep, in which a member describes the rota and is asked nothing that she was not willing to be asked.
Transcribed from tape · [pause] and [bells] as marked by the transcriber
EXTRACT. Speaker unnamed at her own request, a subscriber's widow, keeper of the accounts for nineteen years. Read back to her on 4 February 1985 and approved by her in writing. The remainder of the tape was erased on 9 August 1985 as promised.
Q. Who decides the order of the rota?
A. Nobody decides it. It runs. A man comes on at the bottom when he joins and he comes up as the ones above him die or go. That is the whole of it, and it is the reason there is never a word about it.
Q. And if a man cannot come?
A. Then the next one comes, and the first one is not thought less of. It is a rota, not a test.
Q. Can I ask about the box?
A. You may ask.
Q. There are seven pairs in it.
A. There are.
Q. Six men carry.
A. Six men carry. You have been at enough of them to know that.
Q. I am not asking you to explain it. I am asking whether it is ever spoken of.
A. No. And you will find that is not a secret, Doctor. It is only that there is nothing to say. If you had a drawer at home with seven spoons in it and six of you at the table, you would not be sitting up at night about the spoon.
Q. Would the seventh spoon be worn?
A. [The speaker did not answer. After a pause she said:] I have given you a good deal of my afternoon.
Q. You have. Thank you. Shall I stop the machine?
A. Aye. Stop it.
Held at the North House with the rest of the deposit. Typescript from the tape, with the depositor's questions given in full. The speaker's approval letter is filed with the extract; her name is not in the deposit.
Catalogued at the North House · reproduction permitted for study · redactions are not itemised