The end of the fair and Dr Beer...

Sunday morning and the fair is gone as if it had never been. It'll be back next September bringing along its thrills and magic, but for now the Sunday Morning bells of St Mary's will be ringing out at Priest End where Doctor Beer's house used to be. Still is I guess, not that he'll be there. No, he'll be long dead.

I remember another September Sunday, another September Sunday long, long ago and a visit to the doctor.

I can’t say that I enjoyed visiting Doctor Beer, but then I can’t say that I didn’t enjoy it either.

Doctor Beer was our family doctor. This meant that when one of us was ill, (two sisters, no brothers), my Mother would threaten us with a ‘visit to Doctor Beer’. Not much of a threat really, the slightly gloomy surgery in his half-timbered house at Priest End held an odd fascination for me, and there was always a dish of orange and lemon boiled sweets on the dark oak side table in the waiting room.

I remember the long walk to his surgery from our small house at the other end of town. It always seemed to be autumn and dark, and there was always the smell of bonfires and fireworks in the air. Perhaps I only ever got sick when summer was over and the air had turned to damp, or perhaps it’s simply one of those odd tricks which memory plays.

Either way I liked the surgery with its huge open fireplace and in an odd, slightly terrified way, I liked Doctor Beer.

One evening, it was wet and dark outside (as always), my mother decided that my sore throat and headache was worthy of a visit to Doctor Beer. She bundled me up in my heavy coat, scarf, gloves and balaclava and we walked through the rain the mile or so to the surgery. The waiting room was almost empty, one old woman, one old man and a young mother with her baby, and as usual it was lit with the single standard lamp and the tiny two bar electric fire inadequately set in the huge brick fireplace. The fireplace ran along almost the entire length of one wall, the floors were huge black oak planks of varying widths and on the fireplace mantle Chaucer and his pilgrims made their holy way to Canterbury.

I loved those flat wooden figures. There must have been twenty of them, friars and millers on donkey and horseback, the odd pardoneer or two, a strage foolish clown and in the lead Chaucer himself in a huge grey floppy hat and dull green coat upon a dapple-grey mare. Each figure had been keyhole saw cut from a piece of softwood and painted by hand. The workmanship was exquisite and they were obviously very old. I often thought about stealing one of the figures, probably Chaucer. I even imagined stealing them all and taking them home to display on the red brick tile of my bedroom windowsill.

In the end I slipped that clown into my pocket, I couldn't resist, I wish I hadn't, but I did.

More fool me, as that bloody man would say. I wonder who the Autumn People took with them this time?