like an Anderson shelter, with a blazing fire in one corner to heat
the tea flasks and low benches built round the wails raised off
the earthen floor. It was there they took their piece, in relays
so as not to stop the tables, and it was here his early adult education
began. He would sit quietly while the older men talked of their
days in the pit, using words like cleeks, and benches, snibbles
and rope runners, dooks and slushers that brought strange visions
into his head, waiting for the day he could be a part of this brotherhood,
this closed shop of unique men. At other times, usually on Mondays,
the talk would be of the weekend exploits of the younger men of
how many pints were drunk, or how much had been won at the "Dugs",
or the unrepeatable excesses that had been forced on the body of
fat Mary, the town bike.
A few months later he was off to the training centre, over a hundred
of them from all over the coalfield, the replacement for the wartime
Bevan boys, eager to get through their underground training and
become "real miners". The training centre was at Lingerwood Colliery
alongside the famous Lady Victoria. It was there he went underground
for the first time to the training gallery to learn what the old
men called "pit sense" — how to use your ears to listen for the
movements of the strata and the creak of supports — to respect the
moving machinery used to cut and transport the coal out of the pit
and men and supplies into it — to never turn your back on the coal
and remember you were fighting nature all the time. He soaked it
all up like a dried-up sponge eager to progress from each stage
of the training to the next. But it was at the College, Esk Valley
it was called, that he really excelled. The course included one
day a week at College in the nissen huts of the old Newtongrange
Miners Hostel where they went back to school to cover some of the
"theory" of the job. Most of his fellow trainees heartily disliked
this one day at the College, comparing it to being back at school,
but he had been different. The complexities of Ohm's Law or the
power transmitted by a belt drive held no terrors for him, for the
first time he found meaning in mathematics through its application's
to mining problems. How to work out the breaking stress of a pit
prop or the power required to hoist a load of coal hutches up a
1 in 4 incline were real problems, their solution Only possible
through mathematics. His social development took further strides
through his contacts with fellow trainees from the surrounding mining
villages. He learned that "Kitten" men were different from those
from Roslin where they worked the "stye" coals, that the Dean Tavern
was owned by the Lady men and that it was whispered that "they still
ate their young" in Arniston. All too soon the 3 months basic training
was finished and he was sent back to the "Links" pit to work. Due
to his keenness he was picked |
