Change Wasn't Anything New For John In Recent Years

Change wasn't anything new for John in recent years but there was more afoot in the spring of 1990.

He worked as a coal miner for nearly 20 years and after the struggle of the strike in the early 80's every day was doom and gloom at work, every morning he and his workmates expected bad news in the form of pit closures.

Working situations changed but he still had a decent job and could afford to pay the mortgage on their house on Terrace Lane , which had neither a Lane or terraced houses. It was a road leading away from the main village, in winter it looked tidy but bleak and in summer leafy and full of colour. Look up the lane and you could have been in the country miles from any town or industry; look the other way and prominent above the rooftops were the pit headstocks.

His wife Emily and daughter Jude couldn't really see the strains which affected her husband and his future; he kept his innermost feelings to himself and shared every other feeling as a happy family man. He travelled half a mile to work every day although he always wished something would change his life, a lottery win, a Pools win or even a 'Bobby's job doing something nice and easy for the rest of his life for more pay. Yes at times work underground to meet bonus targets got very strenuous and tiring and it was probably the camaraderie and conscientiousness of the team that kept their spirits up.

Emily came from a mining family and once only lived about three miles away from their current home. She loved her house and motherhood and missed her work at times but wouldn't change her life. The family income dropped markedly after she finished work to have baby Jude but John's income was just enough for them to live their lifestyle. Well clothed and fed, a house, a car, a holiday most years and enough for some social entertainment. The mortgage meant they would have to work for many years to come but 'that's life' as they coined it.

On his return home from a dayshift his wife Emily looked a bit distraught. Maybe there is a leaking joint under the kitchen sink or something? John thought "Looks like a trip to the DIY centre and get it sorted before I get chance to relax." But no, his wife looked more on the serious side than that. She had heard from a neighbour that Newcroft Colliery was to close and it was on the local news. She never hesitated and told John immediately. He brushed it off: "They have been closing our Pit since the bloody strike. We haven't heard owt and the 'afters' shift didn't say anything," he assured her. But in the back of his mind he knew it could come at any time.

There had been Pit closures but always transfers to local Pits and even his own Colliery was made up of an assortment of miners from the area, each with their own pit-talk and methods. In a way the melting pot it had become had taught miners to adapt to change. The miners who came from 'family' pits became a part of their new families. Human nature says you can't all get on together but as miners they found a way. Also, in this integration process new friends were made because they were all in the same situation, thrown together by politics and money out of our control.

So, John knew he hadn't got to get a new waste pipe for the sink or paste back some wallpaper that had peeled off. He got down to his dinner and ate as he reassured Emily 'the pit will be here when I'm gone'.

Sayings like this were used many years ago when coal was a vital, part of this country; they often stuck and were often believed in.

John had steak and chips on a Tuesday when Emily bought the meat from the butchers which seemed, at a time when supermarkets were taking over all household and foodstuff sales, a treat.

Local shops and amenities had slowly disappeared over the last decades but no-one was even worried what was happening to the communities nowadays. A baker here and a butcher there disappeared. A local public house closed in the late 1980's and that was put down to less miners being in the village but no-one seemed to let it worry them, there was always the Miners Welfare Institute Club for a cheap pint and another pub down the 'bottom end'.