CHAPTER 19
ME AND BAIRT
LAWRENCE – PART ONE
Subject: Coalmining and capitalism
From Ralph Aardman Date: 23/09 11.24
To:
Cc:
Hi Derek,
I've just come across an article about your birthplace in researches for my thesis on the death of capitalism in twentieth century rural Britain. I'm right aren't I that you were brought up in the same pit village as D. H. Lawrence? Anyway here's the link: http://www.healeyhero.co.uk/rescue/pits/mooregreen.htm
I thought you might be interested.
How's construction of the retreat from real life going? You still hankering after that childhood paradise you never had?
My love to Maggie.
Best as ever
Ralph
I'm back at Mill Cottage, and for want of anything better to do while The Old Stables lies in its latest coma, I've been catching up on emails. There are loads that need urgent attention, from the builders' merchant (unpaid invoices over thirty days), the scaffolding erector (future contract), the ready-mix supplier (warning of present insurance liability), the bank manager (interest rate rise), etc., etc., which I decide can wait while I look at Ralph's.
I click on his link and there sure enough are pictures of Moorgreen Colliery in the village of Newthorpe in Nottinghamshire. I wasn't actually born there, but it's where I spent much of my childhood. I look up from the laptop screen in time to give a wave to our landlord who's striding past in goggles, swinging his petrol-powered leaf-sucker back and forth, as he's been doing since early morning. In the field behind him, a tractor is pronging up the bales of hay scattered every ten yards. Suddenly a sparrowhawk drops onto the branch of a sycamore tree five or six yards away, hunching its shoulders like an old man in a cloak. I jump up to get my camera from the other room. But by the time I get back, it's gone and the landlord and his chugging leaf-sucker are back in the window frame.
Maybe what Ralph means is that by choosing to live a village life, I'm compensating for a grim childhood of coal-dust-choking poverty. Maybe through his Marxist-filtered specs that's what he sees. I'm going to have to put him right. That's not what it was like at all.
Newthorpe village isn't too far from the little town of Eastwood, which is the birthplace of D. H. Lawrence. And in many of his novels, plays and poems, he paints vivid pictures of the area, especially of Newthorpe and the countryside round about.
We lived on the edge of Eastwood. In summertime, I used to walk across fields to Greasley Beauvale primary school in Newthorpe village. Lawrence himself had been a pupil there. Of the thirty-odd kids in my class there was barely a handful whose dads weren't coal-miners. There were seven pits within four or five miles. Newthorpe was where we kids used to build dens in the earth bank by the old disused railway, scoop up frogspawn with cupped hands to take home in jam jars, and in winter, leap onto icy slides in the school playground where the caretaker had helpfully chucked buckets of water the night before, (which under today's Health and Safety Laws would probably earn him a jail term for reckless endangerment of children's lives). There were old people in Eastwood who could still remember Lawrence.
I was with my dad one day in the early sixties, passing The Three Tuns Inn when out tottered an elderly miner, Edwin Cresswell, white muffler at his throat, a carved walking stick in one hand, dog-lead to fat Staffordshire terrier in the other.
'Ah do, Mesta Teela,' he greeted my father. I should explain that the dialect here in the Erewash Valley owes more to Old Norse than to the Ten O'clock News. For anyone born more than ten miles away, subtitles are required.
'Ah do, Mesta Teela,' (Good day, Mr Taylor.) Edwin turned to me. 'Ey up, lad.' (Hello, my boy.) Then back to my father. 'Ow insoid a Thray Tuns wor jus gassin abaht Bairt Lawrence.' (The landlady of The Three Tuns Inn raised the topic of Herbert Lawrence.) 'Aye, ahh wor a skewl we im. Ey wor a reet mucky bogger, tha knows.' (Yes, I recall when I was at school with him, his sexual morals were questionable even then; you'll appreciate what I'm saying, I'm sure.) 'Ey wor awles plyin wi gels, not wi lads.' (He used to play with the girls rather than with the other boys.) 'A reet mardy lettle sod, tha' Bairt Lawrence. (Herbert was a delicate soul, rather prone to tears.)
I've sometimes wondered whether Edwin was retro-fitting his memories to contemporary public opinion. This encounter between him and my father occurred soon after the Lady Chatterley court case, when censorship of Lawrence's novel had just been lifted and the newspapers were full of salacious extracts from it about the gamekeeper's 'John Thomas' and Lady Chatterley's naked cavortings. Edwin was contributing to the national debate.
Newthorpe (locals, the older ones anyway, call it 'Nayth-rop') is the village my ancestors came from. In 1820 my Great-great grandfather Samuel married Mary and they set up house at her parents' cottage in the village's main street. They earned a living right there in their own home, knitting stockings and other small bits of clothing on a pedal machine, about the size of an upright piano. The whole family – they had eight children – helped out. Most of Sam and Mary's neighbours were also framework knitters. It had been like that in Newthorpe for about two hundred years, ever since the little farms, just big enough to support one family, were killed off when the big landowners enclosed the common land.
But by the time Sam and Mary got married, change was on the way again in the village. In 1819, there'd been riots in Nottingham, 7 miles away. The knitters were being driven out of business by mass production. I don't know whether young Sam was there chucking rocks at the dragoon guards who'd been mustered to keep the peace and kick the poor. I like to think he was. But it was a lost cause.
Work was moving out of the home. And out of Newthorpe. By the 1850s, framework home-knitting was gone for ever. While the women of Newthorpe were trapped at home with up to a dozen kids, the men turned to work in the huge coal mines that were being sunk at places like Moorgreen on the edge of the village.
I say 'men'. I should say, 'and boys.' In 1857, Sam and Mary's youngest, Isaac, my great-grandfather reached the age of ten and followed his four older brothers down the mine.
So Newthorpe had become a pit village. And for the next 130 years, every morning and evening, its streets echoed to the clatter of pit-boots as black-faced men and boys tramped home to wash at the kitchen sink.
The next economic earthquake hit the village in the 1980s. Maggie Thatcher decided coal-mining wasn't economic. 290,000 jobs to go. Rioting again. And worse. In many pit villages of south Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire, families were divided as accusations of 'Scab' dirtied the air. And to this day there are brothers who've never since spoken to each other because one broke the strike while the other picketed.
These sorts of family splits were nothing new. Take my dad's story. What would Ralph make of that? I decide to ask him, so tap out an email.
From Derek Taylor [[email protected]] Date: 14/11 19.23
To: Ralph Aardman [[email protected]] Cc:
Hi Ralph,
Thanks for the link to Newthorpe and the pit. Thought you might be interested in a sociological case study.
In 1921, my father, Albert Taylor, won a scholarship to a grammar school in Nottingham. His father, Arthur, who was a leading light in the local branch of the National Union of Mineworkers, had to pay a small daily sum to keep his son at his new school. Only a penny or so. But it was a scrape for my granddad because in 1921, he and his fellow miners were out on strike. The coal owners had decided to cut their pay and increase the length of the working day. Granddad Arthur was proud of his son's academic achievements, and somehow he found the money to keep him at the grammar school.
Five years later, Albert Taylor left school and got a job in the offices of the local coal company. He'd broken the cycle of son following father down the pit. It was the summer of 1926, the year of the General Strike, and one of the first jobs Albert was given was overnight fire-watch duty at the coal co
mpany offices. It was feared the strikers might try to set light to the building. Albert and his two pals, fellow office juniors, were supposed to bike off to the police station for help in the event of trouble.
On their first night on duty, a light midsummer one, the three young blokes passed the time playing cricket on the grass outside. Just before six in the morning, there was a distant noise. Louder and louder came the sound of tramping feet. Rough voices in unison. The strikers, marching like marines, came into view. And there at their head, holding one end of the Union banner was my grandfather, lustily singing with the rest, "Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer, / We'll keep the red flag flying here." My grandfather turned and waved to young Albert, as if for a second a father's pride trumped loyalty to comrades. Then he marched on past with the other men to mount that day's picket at the pit gate.
I once asked my dad whether my grandfather saw it as a betrayal, his son working for the coal owners against the strikers.
Dad replied, 'Oh no. What was important to him was that his son wouldn't have to spend a lifetime down the pit as well. They were strong men, but they knew coal-mining for what it was: dirty, dangerous and badly paid.'
Class treachery? Or an escape from oppression?
Best
Derek
And I hit the SEND button with the high hope, though low expectations of confusing him.
In the mid 1980s, Newthorpe avoided the bitter clashes that split other villages. Miners' jobs there died more slowly. Moorgreen colliery stayed open for a couple of years after the other pits in the area had all closed down, and when it too shut in 1985, there was no point in striking or struggling. Mining was long done for.
By pure fluke, two years later I witnessed the final minutes of the last vestige of coal-mining in Newthorpe.
We were staying with my parents for the weekend at their new bungalow between Newthorpe village and Eastwood. By now I'd moved, to a different planet. A place at Christ Church, Oxford, then work as a TV news correspondent meant a home in London when I wasn't travelling in the Middle East or the United States. On the Sunday morning I got up early to go for a jog. Love of cooking, less often my own back then, was already starting to show in my waistline. I slogged along Main Street, down Mill Road and into Engine Lane. It was not yet eight o'clock but several dozen people were standing outside their houses, arms folded, smoking, chatting quietly. And there across the road was a gigantic bulldozer. The big metal scoop you'd expect to see had been replaced by a huge, fearsome prong. Its target: a concrete tower with two iron wheels on top, the headstocks, which were now all that was left of Moorgreen pit. This last ugly, lonely monument was to be demolished.
I joined the little group to watch. The machine advanced on the headstocks tower and poked it viciously in the chest like a schoolyard bully. The third jab punctured the tower's front then tore back the concrete casing with an agonised yowl. Our faces expressionless, we watched the walls being smashed, the iron wheels bent, and a curtain of dust rise to conceal the final act in a 123-year drama.
A middle-aged woman, hair still in curlers, turned to me, 'Bluddy gud riddance, ah say.'
An older man interrupted, 'That's as mebee. Burr it's bin the life of this place for more 'an a 'undred years.' He took a drag on his cigarette cradled against the wind inside his hand. 'And men 'ave died down there. We munt never forget that.'
CHAPTER 20
ME AND BAIRT
LAWRENCE – PART TWO
So what's Newthorpe like today? I went back there last year for an in-the-footsteps-of-Lawrence walk with Geoff and Chris. You've met them already. They're both old school friends. Geoff's the one who hikes a lot and is as fit as a butcher's dog, and Chris is the one doing a late-in-life doctorate. We decided to head off first to where the old pit had been. The path lay downhill by the side of a straggling hedge, and we chattered on together, joking about the old dialect words. I offered 'wittle', as in man with dog saying, 'Dunner wittle thi'sen, eh norrot yuh!' (Don't worry, he'll not hurt you). And Chris, whose dad had been a collier, threw in 'scrozzle', as in miner describing life at the coalface, 'Yo'd aye to scrozzle ower tubs' (You'd have to struggle over the coal wagons).
We were laughing a lot so didn't notice that by the time we reached the bottom, the path – as paths are wont to do if you don't keep them on a tight lead – had wandered off on its own somewhere. Where we wanted to go was on the other side of the thick, high hawthorn hedge, which – as we scoured its length for a way through – suddenly revealed a couple of metres' width of fence. A bit on the high side, but, in the spirit of fifteen-year-old lads out on a lark, I said, 'C'mon, we'll get over it.'
Geoff looked at Chris, and Chris looked at Geoff.
Now, I've never been famous for my sense of balance. But I have been famous for forgetting I've never had one. So I got as far as climbing up the fence like a ladder, and even got my right leg over the top, slotting the toe of my hiking boot into the second rung down. I then noticed my other boot, the one still on Geoff and Chris's side of the barrier, was also slotted over the same rung. The two toe-caps were staring past each other in opposite directions. The obvious solution to this uncomfortable posture was to simply crouch down, grasp the top rail of the fence with both hands, and thus secured, reverse the process which had brought me to this position in the first place.
However, as soon as I attempted this, I realised that because my toes were pointing in towards each other, my knees were locked. This meant I would have to bend from the waist, and because the top rail was down below the level of those same knees, I'd also have to do some tricky shifting of my body weight. For those of us who are equilibrially challenged – and have more than sylphlike midriffs – this would have been hard enough on firm earth. But, of course, my feet were turned inwards so providing none of the stability of the conventional forwards-pointing foot model. The result was I almost toppled head-first into the spiky hawthorn hedge that bordered the section of fence.
I had begun, as Geoff later pointed out, to 'scrozzle', and, as I realised myself at the time, to 'wittle,' as well as wobble.
'Don't bother, Derek, it's not worth it,' said Chris.
In other circumstances I might have been flattered by this advice. It assumed I'd had the foresight to provide myself with a shortlist of options, one of which was 'not bothering'. But bothering now seemed like the only choice open to me. And what's more I was stranded and bothered.
It was at this point that a young woman walking a long-haired mongrel came by on the side we were trying to reach.
'Are yer orlright?' she asked as the dog trotted over, wagging its tail, before attempting to join me on my lofty perch. 'Shouldn't you get down from up there?' she asked. My mind was so busy with the task of staying upright that I didn't even point out to her that we'd gone beyond considering what my objective should be and that she would be better employed developing plans for my recovery.
Geoff said, 'See if you can twist your right foot round so they're both facing in the same direction.' Now this, in theory, was a sound stratagem. And a few seconds earlier it might have seen me make an elegant descent back down to where my two friends were waiting. But in the meantime, the fence, subjected to the mongrel's enthusiastic attentions, had begun to vibrate with a rhythmical sideways motion, like the Millennium Bridge over the Thames, which you'll remember had to be shut for re-strengthening as soon as it had opened to foot traffic.
'Steady!' said Chris, grabbing the woodwork in an attempt to get it to return to its natural state of stasis.
'I've got yer,' said the young woman, rushing over and reaching up to clasp my right ankle in an iron grip, thereby stifling my timid efforts to execute Geoff's plan.
Meanwhile the oscillations of the fence, as though I had become one with it, were spreading upwards, first to my hips, then my torso, before overtaking my neck. Taken together they amounted to a sort of dad dance, an impression which was accentuated by my arms which by now were outstretched, and by my h
ands which were gyrating at the wrist, as I tried to keep my centre of gravity within a ten-degree angle as measured from the base of the fence.
Within seconds, this performance stepped up several gears till it more resembled the frenetic final stages of the Flamenco. Chris was pushing his shoulder against the swaying woodwork, and the young woman was desperately attempting with her free hand to grab hold of my other ankle, while the dog, in a misguided belief that it was helping, kept leaping up against the lower rails, thereby further accelerating the fence's jiving rhythm. Images of my Newthorpe childhood, Oxford student days and TV reporting adventures all flashed before my eyes.
A Horse in the Bathroom Page 16