But my married life was not one of poverty, far from it. We could not be lavish but we were comparatively well off and believe me we counted our blessings. Then my children came and after twelve years of married bliss I had three children. Oh the joy of those happy bygone days. I felt like a queen on a throne. The first one I thought was so beautiful I marveled at myself for producing her. Three years later the second one came, another girl, but just as welcome and seven years later the boy. The joy of the two girls was beyond description as was Ben’s, and so we lived happily together. Then a bomb wiped out my youngest brother’s family leaving just one survivor, our Gerald. We took him into our family. I remember Ben saying to me “we’ll take him and do our best. It might have happened to us” and so he has remained a part of the family. I took upon him as my own, a sacred trust, bestowed upon me for the rest of my days. I hope he thinks I have served him well, and loved him as the others.
Ben is always in my thoughts. I often think of the song ‘These foolish things remind me of you.’ Well, a Jaffa orange always takes me back to my son’s birth. He was born two days before Christmas. On Christmas Eve Ben brought me my supper, bread and butter and Jaffa orange in segments. With Ben and the two girls beside me on the bed we had our suppers before Santa Claus came. I never enjoyed any evening or supper so much. Ben was the kindest and most generous man. A loving husband and father, but he was taken too soon from us. Christina Rossetti says, “a man’s life is but a working day,” how true that seemed for him. He gave his life for his job.
He was a very happy fellow and could make friends so easily. I was the opposite because I was so reserved. He is never far from me and as is said, wishing makes it so. I recall a poem in which some kindred spirit somewhere sums up my thoughts.
Once a day and sometimes more
He knocks upon my day dream door
And I say warmly “come in my love
I’m glad you’re here again with me”
Then we sit and have a chat
Recalling this discussing that
Until some task that I must do
Forces me away from him
Reluctantly I say goodbye
Smiling with a little sigh
For though my day dreams bring him near
I wish that he was always here
But what I know I cannot change
My dreams and wishes can arrange
And through my wishing he can stay
Nearer to me every day.
But I often say my life is not all sad, oh no, not at all. My grandchildren have made life still worthwhile. Our Jim is so considerate. I could not wish for anything more. Then our Ben’s bairns are really lovely, a happy crowd always so pleased to see me. My other grandchildren, I am sorry to say have grown away from me. I suppose this was bound to happen, because they are so far away, but they are all good scholars yet never think of writing a little note even in acknowledgment of presents. I suppose most grandparents have the same complaints. As my brother often says to me, “youth is callous”. But then perhaps we were the same. We are so full of life when we are young, looking for joy and happiness and why not, the sorrows soon follow.
Yet, looking back, I often visited my grandparents who lived in the miner’s homes beside the Mill Inn. I loved to hear the stories my Grandfather could tell of his very young years in the Isle of Man, and how he stowed away on a boat which brought him to England. Evidently he was befriended by a mining family. How typical this was in those far off days. They would be poor as church mice, but one more added to their own would make no difference. As long as he could integrate he would be welcome. The miner got him a job down the pit at White Haven. He was what was called a trap door boy. Remember, he was only eight years old. He was self taught and spent his whole life fighting for the miners. I have told you of how he was banished to America for his work for the miners, but he was soon recalled by the Union.
He was a most interesting man with a strong capacity to put his views across, and had a deep resounding and compelling voice. He had no use for politicians or chapel men. I am not endorsing this view, but it was his and he never wavered. He had five sons but none of them followed in his footsteps except as miners. Believe me they are the salt of the earth. To watch a local football match then go to a pub and discuss the game fully over their pints was, to them, a marvelous weekend. My father seemed to spend his life down the pit.
He would go out at eight o’ clock in the evening and come home around seven the next morning. He would have a bath and his breakfast then he would sometimes go across the fields to the farm for the milk or go as a beachcomber to the Blast Sands. He brought home all kinds of things, sometimes useful and sometimes useless but always varied. Then he would have his dinner and go to bed until pit time again. Yet all he prayed for was strength to carry on. Alas! He died at the age of 53. Ben and I often used to talk of him and Ben always regretted his dying at so early an age, yet he himself was only 57 and thought he had had so much easier a life. One can never tell. I never thought I could live so long without him. My brother Herbie has been a constant comforter to me and has helped me in so many ways.
Life was never easy in those far off days, yet funnily enough, things seemed easier in the years that followed my father’s death. My brothers were growing up and one after another started work. Wages were very small but one with another made it easier for Mother. After the First World War things were very tight. Money slumped. Everybody’s’ wages took an enormous tumble. As the men returned from the war the women had to stand down to make room for them. We went back to the hard times and by the thirties we seemed to be worse off than ever. I am seventy-seven and I cannot count the number of crises I have passed through, known and unknown. Yet on looking back I was always extremely happy. People need not worry about youth. They can ride storms and still get pleasure out of life. Whether they are aware of it or not I cannot say but they are like Kelly Lamps. They cannot be knocked down. Miners were very badly off in those days. Those who lived beside us were buying what were called scheme houses and many times their wages would not cover this liability. They scrimped and schemed until life was one great toil for them. They sold their coals. 3/6 for a load of coal. Think of that and compare it with today. Whatever they have got now they have paid dearly for over many years. Yet they have always held their heads high. They truly are a great race of people.
Mind you, one could see the difference in the generations. The young ones coming on after the First World War were not the submissive lot like their fathers before them. Submissive respect for bosses was waning, and we hear today, “what is the world turning to?” It is progressing in many ways. I don’t begrudge the young one single thing. Life is to be lived and they are right to get what they can out of it as long as they hurt no one in the process.
Far too soon came the Second World War. The older ones were scared knowing what happened in the first war, but the young, poor bairns, thought at first, that it was a picnic. People are not unlike lemmings. They go to their destruction every few years. We’ll never learn.
Food was very scarce as I have said before, but we made some nice and some nasty concoctions from what we had. We had no imported fruit, and I remember going to night classes to learn how to make some of these weird dishes. No bananas? Then make some. When Parsnips were in season we boiled them and mashed them with sugar and a few drops of lemon essence and lo! Banana to spread on bread and believe it or not we kidded ourselves it was like the real thing. Recently I tried a little again with one parsnip and I could not look at it. We were brainwashed into thinking that eggs were unnecessary in cakes hence the eggless wonders. You could have stotted them from here to yonder and they would not break. Yet we queued for them at the baker’s shops. Tealeaves were never thrown out until the water poured on them was as clear as when it came from the kettle. And sugar! It was a crime to let your hand shake as you carried the spoon from sugar basin to tea cup. Yet people did not show their resentment or depression. They laughed over their various experiences and exchanged ideas with great hilarity.
Potatoes and turnips were scarce and I remember the men raiding the potato pits in the farmer’s field. Sometimes they kicked over the traces but by and large they were well conducted, “little does the poor good and little do they get,” was one of my Mother’s sayings but we all seemed poor together. But after the war things began to turn sour. The men came home with such high expectations from the promises made to them by Parliament. But they found only poverty and unemployment facing them. All they wanted was to settle down and have a few of the things they had missed in the trenches. They had been sick and lousy and unkempt, half starved and frozen all that miserable time and now they expected something different.
Wives and mothers too had suffered tortures not knowing what had happened to loved ones. Missing. That was the dread message they had received. Some never heard any more, a few turned up as prisoners. When men came home on leave it was a terrible job getting rid of the lice and sores and the only reward for those poor women was the return to the front to suffer all over again. Very few men lived to see their twenty-first birthday. I can still picture some whom I knew from the tennis and cricket clubs and the bible class.
We saw them once in uniform and then no more. We suffered too from the air raids. The sirens chilled your spine, and there was a mad scramble for the shelters. It wasn’t easy to lift children asleep from their beds and get into shelters. My youngest brother, his wife and family did not make it. A landmine was dropped nearby and all were killed save the oldest boy. He was buried in the debris for twenty-four hours and was badly injured but he survived. He has since been one of my family.
There was great rejoicing when the war ended, but peace was no picnic. Food and clothes remained on ration for a few years. We had made weird things for our children so that we could spend the coupons on shoes. I bought some dish cloths and made some vests for the children. I crocheted round the neck and sleeves in a pretty coloured wool and I thought them good. We pulled out and re-knit garments which even in our poorest days would have been given to the rag man.
I remember my mother cobbling our shoes in the First World War. Father had died, so Mother had to take over. She could rip off a sole and put a new one on as good as any cobbler in those days. I still have the last she used to use, but I am not so clever as she was. When I look back I wonder at their abilities and their ingenuity. She could read a letter but otherwise was no scholar, but we were all decent scholars and yet she had more wisdom than we had. Truly ‘knowledge comes but wisdom lingers’.
There go my beloved cows. They are being taken to milk. I often dream of donning a milk maid’s bonnet and a course apron and walking in front of the herd calling “kee-up kee-up” like old Sally did when I was young. But then the paper boy calls me ‘the add wife that lives in the bottom door’. He would likely call me the ‘mad add wife!’
The young are much more knowledgeable than we were. When I look back we were simplicity personified. We had to make our own enjoyment. Of course there were the cinemas but once a week was more than some of us could manage. The Church was the centre around which we were gathered. We lived at the High Colliery and the Church was at the Low Colliery. We had a building called the Mission Room and we from the High Colliery spent all our nights there. We had a library, and a games room and a dance hall. Every Wednesday night and Saturday night we had a ‘hop’. Threepence was the entrance fee, and once a month, on a Saturday night we provided refreshments – salmon sandwiches and home-made cakes and tea. We were working to buy a piano as we had only an organ to dance to. It was hard work pedaling to play ‘The Lancers’ and I have known the organ break down in the middle of it all. But the dancing went on until the big lads turned the organ upside down and put it to rights. What an innocent and naïve lot we were, but I wish it was like that today. We lived for Wednesday and Saturday. Then we all went to Church on Sunday night, boys and girls, then for a long walk afterwards.
How we walked in those days. Hail, rain or snow never stopped us. At holiday times such as Bank Holiday, Easter Monday, Whit Monday, Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve we had a dance called a late night. It took Mother a long time to concede, but eventually she did and we had some glorious times. There was terrible disappointment among the boys if they were on the wrong shift.
Changes are so gradual that customs have gone before you realise. I can remember the first big motor coal bunker bringing the coals for the miners, and before we realised there was no longer the clomp, clomp of the horses hooves. Those beautiful big animals vanished from our sight. No longer came the man to tell of the idle pits, “all the pits idle the morn, shifters, wastemen and mechanics”. Go out and listen for the caller my mother would say. No – a notice pinned to the board in the pit yard replaced these men. It was always a job for old men, too old to go down the pit. So it continues – men are constantly being made redundant. Of course it is progress, for now they have pensions much better and sooner than in my young days. We call the young ones now and say they are thoughtless and this and that, but you know, I was a serious minded person and yet I would visit my grandmother and grandfather at least once a week and never gave a thought as to how they were coping. I did not realise that they would be hard-pressed on five shillings a week. I did not know what was coming into our house for mother to manage. I wouldn’t have been told if I had asked.
Miners always addressed each other as ‘marra’. Their greeting would go something like this. “Watch yer marra. How’s tha keeping. “Oh champion”, was the reply, but if the answer was, “Oh, bloody awful,” it was greeted with shrieks of laughter. All miners swore, but we as children were never allowed to do so. We were never allowed to swear or to raise our fists against each other. Mother used to say she could do all the chastising that was necessary. And believe me she could.
I remember her saying to my Father, “It’s time you asserted yourself. You leave it all to me”. He turned to us and said, A’ll make the down stott off yer heeds”. We were puzzled for a very long time!
I have just come back from the shops. It is not very far, but far enough to make me realise how the years are overtaking me. My mind is still quite lively, but not my legs. I say me brain is lively but I am making so many mistakes as I write, sometimes starting upside down on the page but I know you will not mind. So you will have to do the juggling.