Free Everyman's England by Victor Canning

porter and said:
    â€˜May I use the telephone?’
    â€˜Ay, you may,’ answered the porter. The policeman picked up the instrument and called his superintendent at the police station.
    â€˜Sergeant — speaking. There’s a swan up here on the canal,’ he said, ‘with a broken wing and it looks as though it’s dying. Been like it for a couple of days. What shall I do?’
    He was silent listening to his superior’s instructions about the dying swan and while he stood there, his head cocked to the ear-piece, I was called away to begin my tour of the pottery. I asked the porter as I left if he knew what the policeman had decided to do, but he shook his head. No one admires the police more than I do for their efficiency and I should like to have known exactly what their procedure would be with a dying swan with a broken wing. Here was a missed opportunity, too, for me to put to the test the fable of the death song of the dying swan…
    The foreman who showed me over the works left no doubt in my mind of the pride which these people take in their industry. It is not just their bread and butter, a job which they do for so many hours a day and then forget when they reach home. It is their life, and they are not ashamed to admit it.
    He showed me the whole process from beginning to end, and his manner reminded me of my schooldays.
    â€˜This is the canal wharf where the boats come from the Mersey bringing clay from Dorset and Devon. It is put into trucks and runs along that overhead rail and is then shot into these different stalls, according to the type of clay. Mind your head as you go down here. See, the brown clay in that stall comes from Dorset – we use that for one kind of crockery. The white clay, or kaolin in the other stall comes from Dartmoor and is used for other work…’
    There was no need for him to tell me that the white china clay came from Dartmoor. As a boy I had lived in Plymouth and if any boy who lives in Plymouth has walked out to Plym Bridge, blackberrying, or to fish for tadpoles, and not stolen a ride home on the top of a china clay wagon coming down from the moor – then he is no boy at all. The ride back behind a horse patiently pulling a string of wagons filled with white clay was always an adventure, for the carters were not over-fond of small boys… His voice woke me from my reverie.
    â€˜This series of magnets set across the running sludge removes all the particles of steel which come into it during the various processes. It is essential to get this out, otherwise in the baking the steel would discolour the crockery and probably crack it.’
    With the care – and patience – of a mother explaining a moral lesson to a child, he took me through the works; from the canal where the clay came in, to the kilns where the calcined flints lay in whitey-grey heaps, and where, in earthenware tubs, the clay cups and plates were packed to be glossed by the action of the heat on the minerals sprinkled over them.
    I do not think he would have minded had I not been listening as he explained the various processes. It was when we came to the ‘slip’ that I realised that I was in the presence of a master. The ‘slip’ is the prepared clay, ready for shaping into cup, plate, or any other china object. All the excess water squeezed from it by gigantic presses, it travels from the final mixing machine in a long strip, like paste being forced from an enormous tube.
    â€˜Look at that,’ he said, his voice rising and his face suddenly bright with a new expression. He leaned over and sliced a piece of slip from the length with a wire, much as a grocer cuts cheese. ‘Isn’t that grand stuff?’ he asked, and shook his head as his fingers played and dug into the soft clay. ‘It’s good enough to eat.’ And all the while he spoke his fingers were playing with the clay, fingering, caressing and shaping it. He was a