Nonetheless, it was where you could see everybody, you could notice that people who owned shops tended to walk confidently up the centre aisle at the last minute. It was where you could see the merchants in their new clothes. I was an altar boy there and I accompanied the priest with a patten as he gave our communion to the faithful. And thus I got to see everyone's tongue at close range. Some stuck it out to receive communion with great force as though it was a leather strap; others were timid about sticking it out as though it was an intimate part of their body which they preferred to keep hidden. Some had broad flat tongues; the shape of a piece of sole or plaice; others had narrow, thick tongues. And each tongue had a different texture - small wrinkles and indentations filled the surface - and each person had a different colour tongue, pink, for example, (some were pure pink) with eddies of brown and grey. Some people had trouble keeping their tongues stuck out, despite their best intentions, and would draw it back in, as though someone was going to commit some offence against it, and the priest would stand and wait until it ventured out again. And I would stand there, too, watching.

In a book, published in l946, to celebrate the centenary of the Cathedral an essay drily entitled Analysis of Some Cathedral Records looks at the donations to the cathedral's building fund in the l840s. "Lists of names, with sometimes the trade or profession and the address of the donor, the amount which he had contributed - nothing more...At the time when these entries were made the Great Famine was sweeping through the land.

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