During my early years living at home in an NCB estate house with coal fires, my dad received free coal every month as part of his job*. He would ‘volunteer’ me from childhood to join him in shoveling coal into the coal house: as we reached almost overflow, adding another plank to the barrier which kept the coal inside. By the time I was about 12 I could heave a pan shovel right up and over the top barrier. That gave me a build like my dad and brothers, we all had Ricketts, so great upper bodies and bendy legs!
Dad decided to make his own firelighters and kindling from whatever he could “borrow” at the pit. He borrowed a cheese slicer, like a paper guillotine, from the local Co Op, who were throwing it out. My big bro repaired it, dad put sides on it to make a rectangle. Dad borrowed regular amounts of sawdust from the colliery joinery shop, and paraffin from some other pit workshop. He half- pressed the sawdust in the home made press, added paraffin, stirred it and pressed it down hard. He made several of these things at once, showed me how to do it, convinced me it was fun and gave me the job permanently. It took me a few years to understand what a clever, devious, fun guy my dad was! The fire lighters worked very well.
The problem with living in our particular colliery village during the coal – burning years, was that the village was on 3 hills and we lived in the valley, the Dale. Consequently, I must have been breathing in pollution for all my younger life. When driving into the village from any of the entrance roads, it was always a descent. looking down in winter, the village was wreathed in smoke from all the chimneys and the huge colliery boilers. How we all survived from kids, I don’t know! But we did.
*Dad would always slip the NCB delivery lads a few quid to get more coal, which we I shoveled into a bunker we made between us.
When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.
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