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My apprenticeship was finished and I had the trade that I had wanted all along. The work was tolerable, just. Workmates had finally accepted me as an equal. At college I continued to pass my exams and by now I was on the second year of the technician's course, another three years of study and I would be off the tools, onto the management level.
Jock Baker, my boss, wanted to see me for a career assessment; he said, 'We are always on the look out for smart young guys like you. Just twenty, on T2, with T3 and AMIME Honours, you can go straight to the top and I will back you all the way'.
As I look back I realise what an absolute idiot I was, utterly, totally, unbelievable. Things were looking up for young Robert at last, through hard graft, I was on the threshold of realising my potential. So here is how I threw it all away.
It happened one rainy morning at 5.30am. I nipped into Clarkies Paper Shop for a packet of fags before catching Macko's Pit Bus. I steeled myself against the cold and the rain, not relishing the thought of yet another shift on 48s coalface. Mick walked into the shop, I was on my way to work and he was on his way home after a late night out. He painted a rosy picture of his job, and how the whole gang of them went out, night clubbing, drinking, meals and parties.
Mick said, 'Tell you what, I'll have a word with the boss and come into the workshop and have a look at what we do. With a car supplied and a good salary it's not every day that you get a chance like this. Have a good shift, talk to you later’.
So it was that I had a few hours in their workshop and they offered me a job as a service engineer working on fruit machines. It was working 10am to 2pm and 6pm to10pm, 6days a week. The hours didn't matter because we all had money and a car,our nights out started at 10 pm.
I've known the time when eight of us would go out for a steak and we would pay in sixpences. The managers used to go out in the daytime and empty the machines, the engineers had money out of the machines, as did the collector. It was just one big fiddle and it was not the way that I was brought up. You were expected to do it keep the figures straight.
Driving was also a chase from job to job otherwise you were out all day and half the night. I coped quite well and they were pleased with my honest attitude. That was until early on Christmas morning I hit a lamppost and went through the windscreen. I totalled the car and the lamppost, it also cost me a two week stay in hospital. For my pains I collected a face full of scars. They didn't want me back at the fruit machine company so I was out of a job and in court for driving offences, licence endorsed and a £ 15 fine. As though I hadn't been through enough anguish.
Then I got a job testing telephone exchange racks and hated it. Next I was an electrical fitter, I hated that too and when I had an accident that crushed my little finger that was enough, I left there. They were probably glad to see the back of me because the accident was definitely their fault and I should have been due some compensation.
Dave worked away, at oil storage tank cleaning. So I had a go at that for a year but trailing around the country wasn't my idea of fun. I was losing touch with all my friends so I left there. Next, in quick succession, followed telephone linesman, telephone engineer and burglar alarm engineer. I also had a stint as a capstan lathe operator making beer pump end plates, and when you have done that all week you know what hell must belike.
Keep the wheel turning and do a little more each day was the management mantra.
I even went to the Royal Navy Careers Office but they talked me out of that. The Navy would have suited me but as you must have gathered I wasn't very good at making the correct choices in life.
I couldn't settle to anything and I was becoming disillusioned so I went back to the pit. I signed on at Hucknall Colliery and worked for British Coal without a break for the next twenty four years. When I stepped onto the cage and felt the same stomach swooping feeling as we descended, into the darkness, I was back home!
All because a so called mate, didn’t like me doing well and was only happy when I was down.
A lurid title but a very important aspect of all of our working lives.Underground was such a dangerous working environment, it was so hazardous that if the rules were breached the capacity for fatalities was increased. If I didn't do my job correctly, in my role as an underground electrician, we were all at risk from electrocution or methane and coal dust explosions.
After every such accident the rules were tightened and I never had to face the horror of an underground explosion. We saw gas ignitions and fires on a fairly regular basis but luckily we were trained well. All of the electrical personnel had to attend regular training sessions for electrocution protection. On two occasions I can recall the wrong circuit breaker being switched off. The supply voltage was 6,600volts. In the first instance the resultant flash when a live cable plug was split caused temporary blindness and singed eyebrows to the two men closest to the flash.
In the second incident an electrician was putting connecting pins into a live cable plug and he keeled over. His heart had stopped, he had received full power from the left to the right hand. The training took over and we got him back with just a 10 pence-size burn on the palm of his hand. In the relief that followed, we all called him a lazy sod for lying down on the job.
In my thirty years I saw comrades, with whom I worked, who did not make it out alive. In that respect I count myself lucky to have emerged unscathed although I came close too many times.
On my first week on nights as a fully qualified electrician I was sent to 241s coalface in the High Main coal seam at Calverton Colliery. It was August 1967 and we had a fatality. The coal cutting machine driver got his head trapped between two legs of a roof support that had been caught by his machine. No ones fault, just a pure accident. He was dead, so we covered his deformed head and just carried him out.
As was the custom, the pit ceased all production for the rest of that shift as a mark of respect for their dead comrade. Then, on the same shift on the next cycle of nights on the same coal face, (241s), we had another fatality. He was the one who shovelled all the loose coal from behind the coal cutting machine. The roof caved and he was buried for over two hours before we got him out. He was dead and we had lost another one.
It used to affect us all when it was someone we all knew so well, was to suffer a violent death just feet away from where his mates were working. This was what bound us together in tragedy; one of our team was dead.
Where I had my closest shaves happened when I was bending the rules. I wanted to get to the outbye end of 19s loader gate heading. Some empty tubs were waiting to go out and Donkey Cock, (for obvious reasons), was on the haulage engine so I clipped the tubs onto the rope, climbed aboard rang the signal for outbye. DC started up the haulage and I was having a five star ride out instead of a stooping half mile walk. All was going fine until the tubs hit some obstruction on the line. It threw me off ripping my cap lamp cable off and I crouched in the total blackness as the tubs piled up, crashing unseen around me. Wondering when one was coming my way, but DC was on the ball and hit the emergency stop when the tension indicator sounded.
I was at least safe but alone in the total darkness and the blackness is disconcerting until you get used to it. Nothing to do but wait for a rescue, I can’t begin to tell you how comforting it was to see those cap lamps coming down the heading. They didn’t know whether they had a body to deal with or a bad injury. Yes that was a close one.
As to my saviour DC, I just hugged the guy when I got to him and he said, 'You stupid bastard, you should have had more sense. But it was my pleasure to save your ass'.
Another time was riding the main north trunk belt on my own. We used to get off by holding onto a hanging loop of cable and stepping off, easily. I used to do it every day, we all did, but this one time, alone, I missed the cable. Why? I don't know, just that I found myself having to lay flat as the belt rose to empty into a bunker. This meant a fall of twenty feet onto steel plates head first, as the bunker was empty at the time. I yelled out and luckily someone was there and he stopped the belt just in time, I was right on the edge of the drop. My saviour was gone by the time that I scrambled down from the belt. So I didn't know who to thank for saving my life.
Whilst on the subject of accidents and death I would just like to make several points. Then I will get onto something of a more pleasant nature. Serious injuries were practically unknown; if it was serious it was generally fatal. There were very few second chances. Minor abrasions, cuts, grazes, scrapes, bruises and heat exhaustion were really common as you might expect.
Help was a long way off at times and you just tried to get out to the medical centre on the surface. This could have been anything up to four miles away.
Miners as a breed were a superstitious bunch. They would not work the last shift before a holiday; that was the day that you got trapped. Never whistle; it could cause a roof fall; only good conditions will trap you; bad conditions you will treat with respect. As a result of these near misses I became ultra cautious, which is probably what saved me in the end?
I count myself amongst one of the lucky ones who escaped with only cuts and bruises to show for my 30 years working at the sharp end.
