Please join me on a typical day, down the pit.

All of those of us if we are old enough and from a mining area will have seen the winding wheels go round. I know that when out on a bus trip as a youngster, if I saw the wheels go round I would be thrilled to bits. Little did I know that I would one day ride that pit shaft.

We will be on the dayshift and you will be with Beardy Bob, the lead electrician on K 7 s face in the Blackshale coal seam. I will try to paint you a picture in words so that you will have some idea of what we did.

The alarm clock trills its dulcet tones and its 4.20am. We pull on our clothes and clean our teeth and have a wash. Grab a quick cup of coffee and pick up our snap bag that was packed last night.

Into the car for the 25mile drive to the pit and put some folk music on the tape player and we are in the car park before we know it.

If we have had a good trip, maybe there will be time for a bacon sandwich. Often its not possible because of the queue, their bacon sandwiches were legendary. They use a quarter of a ton of bacon a week!

Then we clock on, if we are not ten minutes early we are deemed to be late. It's just a pit thing.

The baths are next we have two lockers, a clean one and a dirty one in two blocks. So its strip off your clean clothes, all of them. Grab your towel, soap dish and bath slippers. Go through to the dirty side and put on your pit gear not forgetting your helmet. Next port of call is the lamp room where we take our own lamp off the self-service charging racks and put the battery on our belts. You don't need to put your lamp on your helmet just yet, I will tell you when.

Everyone must also carry a self-rescuer, a silver coloured canister that has a filter inside to turn carbon monoxide into carbon dioxide. This also goes on the belt.

All of the time we are taking, joking and laughing with mates coming on shift with us. We belong, we are one of them.

Everyone who goes underground has to have two brass checks called motties. One is given in to the banksman when you go down and the other is given in on your return.

Before we actually go down we have to go into the electricians office to find what delights that they have in store for us. We know where we are going because most of us have got a regular job. Then armed with a job list we walk to the shaftside to join the assembled throng, waiting to go down. We walk onto the cage on our turn and drop our motties into the outstretched hand of the banksman.

The cages are double decked and carry 18 men per deck; it can be a tight squeeze especially if there are some hefty lads on board. The safety gates close and signal bells sound then we are off, into the darkness.

Faster and faster it speeds and if you are the first one on it can be a bit unnerving to be only two feet from the dark rushing concrete wall. The safety gates are only wire mesh and to my knowledge no one fell ever through, maybe there was a first time for everything. Then the cage slows and we slide down into the pit bottom lights. One and a half minutes to drop into our secret world that we are taking you to.

Pits have a smell all of there own not unpleasant just oil, minerals and men.

Anyway we can't stand here all day we have got to get on the first paddy if we can otherwise it'll not be worth going. A short walk brings us to a running conveyor belt and every one just launches onto the bottom belt. It's OK it's a manrider and it goes down a 1in 4 drift from the Deep Soft seam where the shaft inset is, to the Blackshale seam. 6 minutes to stretch out, with the rhythmic rollers lulling you to sleep. A bell is thoughtfully placed at the getting off platform at the bottom to wake any sleepers on the belt. (Yes it does happen).

In a lay-by the paddy loco awaits and we have to find a compartment before it gets too full. Each compartment seats four and the ones on the outside have to put their legs up on the side. It simply isn't wide enough for eight legs. Our stop is three stations down the line and as the paddy begins its journey we go into the darkness for the first time that day. We get to our stop and have to untangle our legs to exit the paddy.

No we are not there yet there are another two bottom belt manriders from here, about another mile or so.

We often have trouble with the inline 500 ton bunker so I always check it for operation because it's such a long way back. Then it's up the loader gate checking the main belt drive and the tandem belt drive on the way. We are nearly at the coalface now and the first coal is pouring off the stage loader.

It comes as a relief to know that they have made a start and we can sit a while after our trek to get here.

What do we do now? Well we shoot the breeze with the fitters and the switchman, for a while. Basically waiting for a breakdown, before starting on the list of must-do jobs, including a trip through the coalface to the red hot tailgate.

So we are here for six hours doing this and that and getting absolutely black and knackered. Then it's back the way we came in, stopping off at the baths where the jokes fly thick and fast.

Another folk music fuelled journey home and that's another shift done.

Incidentally we worked 20 shifts in 21 days. The remaining day was Saturday morning off the nightshift. We also worked what was known as the golden hour, that was an hours overtime-cutting coal.

Oh sure that paid us well but now knowing what we had to do, didn't we deserve it? I doubt that these words will get read during my time but to the person who comes across these pages, ­enjoy the read.

Local Pits