! Silent About That Night

In later years, seated around a huge fire, crackling and spitting on a snowy night, the best beer in Europe frothing from the jug, they'd ask him, jocular like but curious with it, how it felt to be remembered just once a year, all over the known world for that one night long ago? ' 'tis strange really: he were a right sod to work for afore that - never a word to me, as if I didn't be there; but that night, it were strange - it were the moment he stood there looking out of the window: there were summat in the room - wish I were a writer, like, to say what it were... we've never spoken about it, mind, but we both know it's there unspoken, like.. we haven't had a bad word between us ever since... that's what I'd like to write about, that's the moment...' silence for a time, as they looked into the hissing fire, those woodcutters and their mates; then put their coats on, trudged out into the snow 'where the saint...' well you know the rest...