Between 7.30 and 8.30 every morning except Sundays, Johnnie Butt made the round of the village of Chipping Cleghorn on his bicycle, whistling vociferously through his teeth, and alighting at each house or cottage to shove through the letterbox such morning papers as had been ordered by the occupants of the house in question from Mr Totman, stationer, of the High Street. Thus, at Colonel and Mrs Easterbrook’s he deliveredThe Times and theDaily Graphic; at Mrs Swettenham’s he leftThe Times and theDaily Worker; at Miss Hinchcliffe and Miss Murgatroyd’s he left theDaily Telegraph and theNew Chronicle; at Miss Blacklock’s he left theTelegraph, The Times and theDaily Mail.

At all these houses, and indeed at practically every house in Chipping Cleghorn, he delivered every Friday a copy of theNorth Benham News and Chipping Cleghorn Gazette, known locally simply as ‘the Gazette’.

Thus, on Friday mornings, after a hurried glance at the headlines in the daily paper

(International situation critical! U.N.O. meets today! Bloodhounds seek blonde typist’s killer! Three collieries idle. Twenty-three die of food poisoning in Seaside Hotel, etc.)

most of the inhabitants of Chipping Cleghorn eagerly opened theGazette and plunged into the local news. After a cursory glance at Correspondence (in which the passionate hates and feuds of rural life found full play) nine out of ten subscribers then turned to the PERSONAL column. Here were grouped together higgledy-piggledy articles for Sale or Wanted, frenzied appeals for Domestic Help, innumerable insertions regarding dogs, announcements concerning poultry and garden equipment; and various other items of an interesting nature to those living in the small community of Chipping Cleghorn.