The Davidson children, all three of them, were playing on the land formerly owned by the National Coal Board, land which at one time was a hive of productivity. The pit, where men trudged to work in the dark and returned home in the dark; spending their lives in the dark, breathing in coal dust and ending up with emphysema. The women at home left wondering if the siren signalling a tunnel collapse would send them running to the pit, to pray and to hug and to cry.
Tommy Davidson, the oldest of the children, was doing well at school, showed promise in English, and was encouraged to write down his thoughts and to write essays. Mr Baxter, his English teacher had read Tommy’s words:
‘950 feet down
The floors are all giving way.
950 feet down
We’ll all be down there one day’.
The three boys played around the old winding house and the blackened brick walls of the colliery offices. They found old rusty buckets and trolleys lying behind the pit social club and as they roamed around this industrial adventure playground their laughter could be heard, almost echoing in this empty place. Eventually the boys made their way back home to their gloomy end of terrace semi. One of the many gloomy houses huddled together, clinging to the hillside topped with a grey slated roof and coal fire chimney pots.
The men, some of whom were retired, but most were now unemployed spent their hours reminiscing over their pints about the mine, and how they, their fathers and grandfathers worked with the coal. How too, the old railway wagons were loaded with the black stuff, their creaking and clanking screeches as steam engines shunted in the colliery yard. Whole communities built around the precious black coal, whose dust lay engrained in the skin of the miners, as engrained as their way of life.
Three boys, Ben, Peter and Tommy, living, breathing and playing on the tomb of a forgotten industry; too young to know what life was really like in that deep black hole, too young to know of the nightmares and the ghosts of those who were buried alive; ghosts of the cage winders and railwaymen. The colliery yard, now empty, deserted and forgotten but where memories linger and nothing changes. Poverty built in with the blackened coal dust and grime of generations.
Three boys growing up in the hope that their future may be brighter than the lives of their forefathers. Escape from the land of the coal dust, the creaking wagons and rusty railway lines: Escape to the sun.
The three boys never realised what was happening at first. By the time they did it was too late. The rumble, like thunder. The three boys didn’t stand a chance. The ghosts of the miners when the shaft collapsed. Ben, Peter and Tommy all saw the ghosts of those miners who were walking slowly, carrying their lamps. They saw them as they hurtled down into the black depths of the mine.
‘950 feet down,
The floors are all giving way.
950 feet down,
We’ll all be down there one day.
Copyright ©IanmAllan2024
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