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
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1745 
