Scratching for Coal
During times when Pa was unemployed (it seemed to us as though the mines were always closing down or re-opening!), we’d sometimes have to get up at about 2am (Pa, myself and brother Ken) and trundle a handcart and a few empty potato-sacks to the nearest slag-heap, a mile or more away. There, on the slag-heap’s steep sides, we’d scrabble among the waste from the mines - being careful not to start a mini-avalanche, of course - looking for knobs of coal, which we’d stuff into our sacks. Then when all three were filled, approximately a hundredweight (112 pounds, or 51kg) per sack, Pa would hump up mine and Ken’s across our shoulders, and we’d step out along the railway-ties (sleepers) to where we’d parked our hand-cart, leaving him to hump up his own sack. We’d count down the number of railway-ties we’d earlier counted off as we trudged out to our work-site, thus 373, 372, 371 ... 2, 1, 0, till we reached the spot where our cart stood waiting, onto which we’d load our sacks to begin the long and tiring, heavy haul home.
Sometimes Ken and I would be tethered in a harness of rope between the shafts of our cart, rather like two work-horses, to pull from the front while Pa pushed from behind; sometimes we’d switch positions for a little relief. Eventually we’d make it home, have a quick bath and breakfast, load up with our school-books and then walk the two miles to County School to tackle the day’s work. Our efforts, of course, meant that the family might occasionally even have some coal to spare, which they could then sell to get a little extra money for food. Kids of today have it all so very easy in comparison!
Our home was on a hillside, as I’ve mentioned in an earlier chapter, so it seemed to us that if ever we had to go anywhere while unloaded, it would invariably be downhill, but always up-hill if we had a heavy load to haul home. Puff! Puff! Puff!
Mutilated Text-Books
Ah, yes! What fun we had with those! I haven’t mentioned that all our school text-books were supplied free of charge by the School Board. They were issued to us at the beginning of the school-year, and we’d have to sign for each and every one, including a school hymnal, of course. We were expected to hand them all back in again at the end of the year, but if we’d lost a book during the term, or had it stolen by someone like my classmate, Clifford Jones (to whose propensity for stealing the books of others I’ve already referred), then, of course, we had to pay for a replacement. Which meant, naturally, that towards year’s-end we kept a very close eye on our text-books!
Some of the books were quite old (and also rather dog-eared), the fly-leaf containing the signatures, and comments, of boys going back for many, many years - making for very interesting reading in themselves.
English Literature plays an important part in this little tale, as it was a favourite thing with both our Lit masters to indulge in the acting-out of plays, particularly those of Shakespeare. The master would point to boys at random and delegate the various roles. Thus, “You’ll be Brutus, you Julius Caesar, you Cassius ...” etc., etc. The selected boys then stood up in their places, to read out from their books their assigned parts in the play.
Unfortunately, however, previous owners of these books sometimes took great delight in taking a book apart and completely re-arranging the pages before binding it all back together again in a very professional manner, no doubt because book-binding was one of the things we’d learned in Arts and Crafts while at Ynyslwyd. Page-numbers would be cleverly changed with Indian ink, making it extremely difficult to detect that the pages were now in the wrong order, so that a boy would suddenly find himself reading out completely inappropriate text, much to the joy of the class and the annoyance of our Lit master.
Sometimes, just the text itself would be subtly altered, so that instead of reading out the correct “Ho, Brutus! Ho!”, let’s say, a student might find himself spouting, “Ho, Brutus! Ho ho ho!” Even worse, a phrase such as “I spit on you!” might have the ‘p’ subtly changed to ‘h’. Changes such as this were limited only by the author’s imagination and ingenuity - and it was all certainly a lot of fun while it lasted! For the students anyway!
Peek-a-boo!
We hadn’t been in County too long before we encountered a most unusual ‘game’ played by young high-school boys. Trouser-fronts, long before zip-fasteners were invented, were held closed by three or four buttons, making it very easy for a quick swipe with hooked fingers to rip your fly open into a wide, gaping V from waist to crotch, exposing everything if you wore no drawers (underpants). Though even they (fastened only by a single waist-button) were no help if they too were yanked open at the same time. Even with both hands free, it was rather a slow job to button it all up again, so the victim of such sport would usually be selected when there were girls nearby and his hands were preferably full, perhaps with a pile of books, and especially if he were strap-hanging in a bus, facing a seated schoolgirl or two.
Sometimes, as we waited for our bus-connection near Victoria Square, a prankster would race through a mixed crowd of boys and girls, leaving behind him a trail of wide-open flies. It wasn’t too difficult to draw the waistband together to fasten the top button with both hands, then once this initial but necessary task was accomplished, you could easily fasten the remaining buttons to conceal the (literally) bare essentials. But with just one hand, believe me it was virtually impossible to fasten that first and vital top button!
Embarrassing — but not to the point you’d run off and hide somewhere, otherwise you might miss your bus. Not so much because girls could now plainly see what little boys are made of, but mainly because of the unexpectedness of it all, in public too, under the eagle eyes of a gaggle of high-school girls who’d all gather close to watch the recovery operation with understandably keen interest while you frantically scrambled to button everything up. The worst part was the inevitable chorus of giggles and wolf-whistles, usually interspersed with teasingly explicit offers to “Let me give you a hand!”, or pointing out to a less knowledgeable friend, “See, right there! I told you so, didn’t I?” or “Could you show us once more, please? I missed it the first time around!” Sometimes, though, there’d be a friendly “I’ll hold your books for you!” from a sympathetic girl in the crowd.
It goes without saying that after the first couple of such incidents in the presence of girls, you made sure that henceforth you always held your hands, or your package, over your belly, to protect yourself. Of course, strictly for its nuisance value, it was sometimes done when only boys were present, or nobody there at all, but this was more a matter of slight annoyance rather than public humiliation, so we weren’t too bothered by this.
The Great Elephant’s Egg Competition
I remember one rather peculiar boy, possibly a year or so younger than I, and therefore in a lower form. I think his first name was Colin, but he was always called by his surname so I can’t be too sure of this now. He rarely walked from one spot to another, or even ran in a normal manner, but proceeded with a sort of galloping gait, thumping himself on the backside with his right hand as he went, as though he were urging onward a horse he was riding. In spite of everything he went through at our hands, he still implicitly accepted whatever far-fetched tale we told him. An absolute glutton for punishment was this young man!
For instance, there was a time when we observed through the lab window that Jimmy, our biology-master, was busy inside, marking up some homework assignments, so we took the opportunity to inform Colin he was urgently needed to help cut up a large cow in preparation for the next class. Without hesitation, he barged into the lab, and even though it should have been obvious right away that there was no cow to be seen he still presented himself to Jimmy to offer his assistance.
On another occasion, while we were all waiting for our bus-connection near Victoria Square, we persuaded him that Halford’s Cycle Shop nearby had an elephant’s egg on display in its window, together with a large placard giving additional details about elephants in general. School-children, we informed him, were invited to write an essay about the egg and to enter it in a competition. The best essay would win its writer a beautiful bike, complete with 3-speed, dynamo-lighting, and so on. He immediately rushed around to the cycle-shop for a look at the egg, returning just in time to catch the bus.
He reported that the elephant’s egg was no longer there, and then we ‘remembered’ that, unfortunately for him, it was to be on display in the window for only three days. He was truly desolate at so narrowly missing the opportunity to win such a bike, so — being his very good friends — we all naturally volunteered to supply him with as much information as we could recall about the egg, without in any way jeopardising our own entries, of course.
Details such as how big it was, and how it tapered more rapidly than a hen’s egg from one end to the other. It was purple, with large green spots all over the shell, plus a scattering of smaller pink ones; and it weighed approximately 300 pounds. We also told him how, because their babies were the favourite prey of lions and tigers, elephants had to build their nests quite high up in the trees, etc., etc. He spent a couple of days writing up a really beautiful essay, extra details being recalled and supplied by us all as he showed us his effort from time to time for our approval. Eventually we assured him that as far as we could tell he’d got everything written down perfectly — even better than some of our own essays, we had to admit rather ruefully — and a very happy Colin finally trotted off to Halford’s Cycle Shop to submit his entry for the Great Elephant’s Egg Competition!