The Spare Day
Cover the clocks
In one valley, between 31 October and 1 November, there is a day with no number. The villagers keep it as a feast. Visitors who share it go home a day older than the calendar says.
- Code
- VN-064
- Kind
- anomaly
- Where it is met
- rural
- Scale
- vast
- Leaves you with
- awe
What it looks like, and what it does
A village in low golden light, long tables set in the lane, bunting overhead, every clock face covered with a cloth. A calendar nailed to the church door with one blank square between two dates.
Arrives overnight. No sunrise is recorded. The day ends at dusk when the last cloth is lifted from the last clock.
What is known
Maes-y-Dydd has kept “the Day Between” since the records began. The church register has a blank line for it every year, and a short note in the margin: “Fed.”
Outsiders are welcomed, fed, danced with and sent home. On their return they find they have lost no time but look a day older. The villagers appear a day younger every year.
What it can do
- Holds a full day outside the calendar
- Adds a day to those who share it
Where it stops
- Occurs only once a year, and only within the valley
- Cannot be carried out of the valley
An encounter
Pugh took part in the feast and danced with a man who told her he was thirty. Her recorder ran for twenty-four hours. When she replayed it in Cardiff the tape held a full day of ordinary talk, laughter and a bell, and a single minute of silence near dusk in which the villagers were all heard to count.
Rhian Pugh, folklorist, Maes-y-Dydd, the long table, The Day Between, last year
What is established, and what is only said
- established: The church register carries a blank line each year since 1594.
- rumor: That those who run out of years go to the feast and do not come back.
- interpretation: The valley may not be keeping a day. It may be paying one back.
Still unresolved
If the villagers grow a day younger every year, they must in time run out of years. The oldest resident is thirty-one. The church register shows her baptism in 1801.
Where it has been recorded
- Maes-y-Dydd (confirmed) — Recorded by Rhian Pugh, folklorist.
Connected entities
- Hourbehind — Both are places with their own time. One is an hour behind the world. The other holds a day the world does not number.
- The Long Dance — Both are old rites that hold time apart. Both are kept by villages that do not explain.