Courting
My maternal grandfather was a coal miner and so was his father before him. Most of the men on my mother's side of the family worked in the coal industry. It was what South Yorkshire was all about for a hundred years - getting that black gold out of the earth - to service other industries and to warm people's homes. Their lingua franca would have included terms like "pit prop", "shaft", "deputy", "overman", "tubs", "brakesman" and "banksman" and they would have shared an intimate knowledge of underground work. They belonged to a kind of brotherhood in which they relied upon each other in ways that surface and white collar workers will never know. At home, bodies blackened by coal dust, they washed themselves in tin baths by the fire. I am a man but at work I was never a man like those men. I didn't get dirty, nor did I strain my muscles or fear methane or chilling underground noises. I dressed in a s...