Cumulonimbus

Cumulonimbus

The black cloud is coming
I feel it faintly at first like
the drops of rain before a storm
the harbinger
of possibilities
that no-one wants

Then it fades and I breathe
it's not coming today
but soon it's back
I can feel the icy fingers
dragging at my soul

I want to fight
I know I must
for the sake of others as much as me
But part of me welcomes it
Bringing its self loathing
Its doubts and fears
and smothering me with them

Inside the cloud you
see only yourself
the rest is noise
You can only wait
and function, or not,
until it decides to go

Drifting away and
revealing the light
the joy of life can slowly return
as melancholy is banished
until the next time
the unwanted guest
creeps slowly into your mind

#MentalHealthAwarenessWeek

(c) Tim Fellows 2017

The Man In the Shed

The Man In The Shed

The man sits in his shed with its orderly tools
He's following his own best gardening rules
Developed over decades in his personal lair
Tending flowers and veggies with such loving care 

His allotment is rented, his terraced house too
He doesn't own much, not been able to
A labourer for all of his long working life
Supporting his family, two kids and a wife

The kids have long flown and his wife died last year
He treats himself to an occasional beer
His shed is his comfort now, all he has left
His planting and cutting surprisingly deft

For a man whose hands were calloused and rough
From a job whose hours were long and so tough
His dog at his feet as he sorts through his seeds
He drinks tea from a flask before clearing the weeds

In the beautiful Cotswolds a different man stands
Admiring his shed that cost twenty-five grand
He's not employed any more, that is true
I wonder what he might be planning to do?

This man with his education so fine
The finest of clothes, the finest of wine
He worked his way up to the absolute top
Without ever suffering a lowly paid job

He gets a fat deal for writing a book
I wonder how he'll make himself look?
Stabbed in the back by his so-called mates?
Failing to win the important debates?

He sits in his shed and ponders his life
With his beautiful home and his very rich wife
Thinking about how he'll justify
His terrible record and all of his lies

In their private dens the men are found
With very little common ground
Both men in sheds but worlds apart
Different brains and different hearts

(c) Tim Fellows 2017

I Held His Hand

I Held His Hand

When I was young
on the beach
I held his hand
He made me feel safe

When I was older
we didn't hold hands
men don't do that
except in their hearts

In the hospital
pain etched on his face
pain in my soul
I held his hand once more



In his chair at home
He was no longer there
so for the final time
I held his hand

John Edward Fellows Apr 1 1935 - Apr 22 2005

Tim Fellows 2017

Pleasley

Pleasley

Two brothers rise from the earth
defiant, proud
Mocking those who ordered
their destruction

Inside their body
their no longer beating hearts
wait, restored to health
but with no blood to pump

Do they remember
those distant days
when they raised
and lowered their mighty load

From the darkness below
where their burrows spread beneath
two counties?
Where the rich seam knows
nothing of man's borders

Days of steam, noise,
clanging machines dragging
the dusty black gold
into the sunlight;
so harshly banished
into history

Now all is quiet and still
except for birdsong,
the excited bark of dogs
and childrens' laughter
in a place of tranquility

Where two brothers who
have nothing to prove
face each other;
Reaching into the Derbyshire sky
with heads held high
 
They stand in glorious tribute
to long gone days
and the love that keeps them
defiant, proud
Mocking those who ordered
their destruction.


(C) Tim Fellows 2017

Dedicated everyone who has helped save and restore Pleasley Pit and to all the volunteers who keep the memory alive.

What's that half wheel for?

What's that half wheel for?

"What's that half wheel?"
My daughter asked
"I see them everywhere"
How could she not
know what it is
or the reason they are there?

"What they were for",
I said to her
"When made into a wheel;
Was to wind the miners
down to work
Did they not tell you in school?"

If they just teach
of kings and queens;
of wars and ancient times
What will we know
of pits and coal;
Of working in the mines?

It's up to us
who lived the days
where memories are so clear
To keep alive the history;
don't let it disappear

The half-wheel's there
to remind us all
of the people of our town
They became our heritage
and we must not let them down.

(c) Tim Fellows 2017

The National Coal Mining Museum - Lives Lived, Lives Lost

This story starts a couple of years ago now when I met John Connell, a former miner from West Yorkshire, when we both took part in a Masters Rugby League game in Barlborough.

We became friends on facebook and earlier last year it was John who alerted me to an initiative at the National Coal Mining Museum, which is located at the former Caphouse Colliery near Wakefield. In the grounds of the museum there is a memorial garden, a place for quiet reflection to remember family members and friends who were part of the industries and the communities they were built around.

It was also John who helped me locate more information about my grandad's brother Jim; another hobby of mine is family history and I'd started to look into Jim a bit more after my mum told me that he died in a mining accident when he was young. It was before she was born and she had limited information about him; John had found a reference to him by searching the National Newspaper Archives but thought you needed to register and pay to get the full details. I was quite happy to do this and followed it up to discover that after registration your first three page views would be free.

So, I did the search and up came two references; one from the Belper News from 1st March 1935 and another from the Derbyshire Times on the same day. Both had clearly come from the same source text but had been edited slightly differently.

There he was, looking just like my grandad, in his Sunday best as a late teenager - hat at a jaunty angle. The obvious family connection through his face already disarmed me a little and then as I read the text the whole story unfolded. Mentions of family members I knew and those I never knew, the shocking report of the accident itself and the subsequent inquest result and the funeral arrangements.

The two events - the finding of the article and the opening of the garden - dovetailed together and it was obvious that Jim deserved to be commemorated in the garden and I began the process of ordering the commemorative disc.

I had mentioned this to my family, of course, and my Auntie Margaret (the daughter of my grandad's brother George) was very keen to add a disc for him too and she ordered hers from her home in the Netherlands. George died from tuberculosis in 1943.

Once the two brothers were going to be there we decided that my granddad, the third mining brother, should be there too. It's very easy to configure and order the disc from the website

Both Auntie Margaret and I had been in touch with Liz Orme, who organises the ordering of the discs and the memorial days too. Liz was extremely helpful and, having met her, clearly takes a personal interest in the history and families behind each of the discs. She is from Derbyshire too, just a few miles from me in Bolsover, where my dad worked at the NCB offices for most of his working life. Liz told us she would make sure the three discs would be together.

Once the discs were ordered we had to wait until November 2016 for the commemoration in the memorial garden. My wife Fiona and I were joined by my mum, my sister Jill and her husband Dunstan.

It was a cold day, with low lying mist as we were welcomed with mulled wine before entering one of the former mine buildings that is used to host museum exhibits related, obviously, to mining. There were quite a lot of people present and the space was pretty full. We weren't in there for long though - introductions were followed by poetry readings and then we went outside to the garden nearby for the dedication. Although the wall is nowhere near full yet, it is quite hard to find yours, even when you have three of them. You get your first chance to see all the others and you get a sense of the wide range of lives that were involved in and affected by the mining industry in the UK.

Once everyone had assembled the next part of the event began -the dedications and names on each of the discs were read out in groups and in-between the Outwood Community Choir performed. It was cold but the length of this segment was perfect to enable us to take in the information and appreciate the music. It was very moving indeed and was made more so by the fact that Auntie Margaret had passed away just two weeks earlier and her sister Kath also back in the summer.

We then had time to look at the wall again before wandering back to the museum for coffee and cake. We met Liz on the way out and had a lovely chat; as we left the mist lifted to reveal the old colliery.

The memorial garden and the wall are a brilliant idea beautifully executed - congratulations to Liz and the team for their ideas and hard work. Following the formal end of coal mining in the UK those of us who come from that background should try our best to ensure that permanent memorials are in place and that education on local history and the national context of how coal drove the industrial revolution are not forgotten. It was, at times, a brutal way of life and you can argue that the industry's passing has benefits. However there is loss too - the loss of the communities, the comradeship and the jobs that it provided have never truly been replaced.

Find out more information and order your disc here

A week of coal mining songs - Nov 21-26 2016

On Saturday 26th November my family went to the National Coal Mining museum to see the unveiling of the discs in memory of the three Hooper brothers Jim, Bill and George. Bill was my grandad and I will write about our day at the NCMM separately.

To celebrate this I posted a daily coal mining song (or songs) on facebook and this is a blog post that brings them all together. 

There are many songs and poems about mining, many written by the men themselves. These were men denied a full education, at least in the traditional sense, but used their natural talents to the full to tell us about their lives. My grandparents' generation were the last to truly live the traditional mining life. By the time the family line reached my generation we have a raft of degrees including Masters level and a range of successful careers in business, science, teaching and the arts that were never open to our forefathers.

This intelligence has not suddenly manifested itself since 1950; it was always there. My grandad had tears in his eyes when he spoke to mum about his grandchildren going to University. "Who would have thought it", he said, "When we were living in the Long Rows and scrapping for bits of coal to keep warm." This from a man who had to doff his cap when a mine owner drove past him in his car to help keep his job that was making that man, rich by accident of birth, even richer. 

To the Hoopers, to my other grandad Ted, the Whitaker family and all the other miners and their families: I salute you and I will be forever in your debt.

Monday

Today's song is by Billy Mitchell and it encapsulates the history of the industry from the creation of the raw material itself to the end of this period of exploitation (of the coal and the men).

Enjoy "The Devil's Ground" - you can buy the album on Billy's site and it's got some other great mining related songs on there.

Update - Nov 2017 - it's now sold out but still available "pre-owned" on Amazon, eBay etc.

The Devil's Ground Live

www.billymitchell.co.uk

Tuesday

Today I've selected  two songs by women. Women have played a key role in mining communities, supporting the husbands, fathers and sons by working long, hard hours maintaining the home and looking after children whilst all the time knowing that one of those men may go to work and never come back. This is beautifully described in Billy Mitchell's "Collier Laddie's Wife" from the Devil's Ground album and the impact of the loss of a loved one is heart-breakingly laid out in Jez Lowe's "Last of the Widows". Here I have selected two songs, the first of which (written by Hazel Dickens)
is beautifully sung a capella by the country singer Kathy Mattea whose roots are in West Virginia in the American coalfields.  The second leaves me a blubbering wreck every time - Kate Rusby's ability to mix folk songs with the brass bands of the mining communities in Yorkshire is unique and chimes very much with my own roots in Derbyshire. Both deal not with the sudden loss of a colliery accident but the lingering after effects of breathing in dust. 

Black Lung - Kathy Mattea

Kathy Mattea's website

My Young Man - Kate Rusby

Kate Rusby's website 

Wednesday

Today's song is more of a celebration of the coal mining life - even though it's always been hard, grinding, dangerous work it bred communities with a sense of belonging, comradeship and shared experience. 

The song is "I Can Hew" and it alludes to the life the miners had outside of work and also the theme of family succession into the industry.

"Well my boy's fourteen, he's a strappin' lad
And he'll go to the pit soon, just like his dad.
And when Friday comes, we'll pick up our pay.
And we'll drink together, to round out the day."

Thankfully this view was not one that my family held and nothing pleased them (and me) more when we were able to break out of the cycle. Thanks for this go to the opening of health and education for all and my family's ability to see beyond the pit heaps.

This version is by Mawkin, who are a great live band and I urge you to see them if you haven't already. 

Mawkin "I Can Hew" live

Mawkin website

Thursday

Today gets political. The industry has had a long history of disputes between owners/management and the workers. For many years there was a callous disregard for safety and constant attempts to reduce or limit pay and in a lot of cases the mine owners owned the houses the miners and families lived in, making eviction a likely outcome of resistance.

My grandad took part in the 1926 general strike and at some point joined the communist party. The final straw was having to take his cap off when the local mine owner drove past in his car.

As the coal began to run out, closures and consolidation were inevitable and this culminated in what became the final significant dispute between the NUM and the government in 1984-1985. 

What has left me very bitter and what I consider unforgivable was not the closures per se but the destruction of the communities and jobs with no attempt to replace the work and rebuild the towns and villages left in the lurch. The use of the police for political purposes, the unnecessary force applied and the associated corruption and cover ups still need to be investigated to reveal the full truth.

The first song is by the late Scottish singer and poet Jock Purdon - the title is self-explanatory and the version is by the Pitmen Poets (Jez Lowe, Billy Mitchell, Bob Fox and Benny Graham). 

 Blackleg Mining Man

The second song on the same theme is by one of the Pitmen Poets, Jez Lowe from County Durham. Jez is a great writer and performer and this song mixes the story of the 1984-5 strike along with a hark back to the way the same subject was sung about in the 19th century. Again, the Pitmen Poets provide the version. 

Judas Bus

Finally, one that not many people will know from Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits from the album On Every Street. It's about the Battle of Orgreave. The contrast between the stillness of the song and the violence we saw on TV makes it more powerful.  

"The iron will and the iron hand in England's green and pleasant land"

Iron Hand

Friday

Today's song is another political song but related to an earlier period in the 1960s and another struggle followed by betrayal. The song refers to the betrayer Lord Robens; the link to this current year is the recent 50th anniversary of the disaster at Aberfan. Robens was a former miner and union leader who was head of the Coal Board at the time; the board were identified at the inquest as being culpable for the deaths of so many, including children, on that terrible day. This was compounded by their refusal to accept responsibility and their raiding of the disaster fund to pay for the pit heap's removal.

Nobody was fired or resigned and Robens went on to be an adviser on Health and Safety legislation; you couldn't make it up.

"And it's down you go, down below, Jack
Where you never see the skies
And you're working in a dungeon
For a pound a week rise"

It was written by Sunderland's Ed Pickford but I've picked a well known version by the Scottish folk giant Dick Gaughan. Dick's not so well at the moment and it's great to see the folk community rallying round to help him out. 

Pound a Week Rise - Dick Gaughan

Ed Pickford's web site

Dick Gaughan's web site

Saturday

Today was an emotional day at the National Coal Mining Museum and there's only one way to finish this week of mining songs and that's with two about the end of mining in the UK. As Bob Fox says in the Pitmen Poets gigs there's no happy ending to this story but we can at least commemorate the lives of those who were part of the two centuries of industrial coal mining.

Pleasley Pit 2015

The first is another from Jez Lowe.  "These Coal Town Days" was a response to the initial brutal announcement of massive pit closures in the early 1990s. This is a live version without the optional chant "Howay man they're liars and cheats". I don't think I need to explain who the liars and cheats are.

About "These Coal Town Days"

These Coal Town Days - Live Version

And finally Ed Pickford's Farewell Johnny Miner - nothing really to say about this, just listen and join in. This is a live version by Benny Graham.

Benny's website

Farewell Johnny Miner - Live version