From Coal Dust to Stardust. Gary Cockerill

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СКАЧАТЬ was the early Eighties, Arthur Scargill was raising hell and there was a drive to revitalise the colliery, a last-ditch attempt to save the local industry by injecting a burst of youthful energy. But it was the last line of the advert that jumped off the page and grabbed my attention.

      EXCELLENT RATES OF PAY

      I was 18 and in desperate need of money. When I had graduated from art college a few months previously I had assumed I would walk straight into a design job in Sheffield or Doncaster, but despite what the tutors had promised us the opportunities just weren’t there. I knew that my only hope of success was to go to London, that magical place where the streets – if not quite paved with gold – were at least paved with advertising agencies and trendy design studios where an ambitious graduate might make their fortune.

      Kim had by now secured a modelling agent in London, so we had decided to move down South and get a place together. Besides, Armthorpe no longer held any appeal for me. Most of my friends seemed content to remain in the village forever with their apprenticeships and girlfriends, their lives comfortably mapped out, but in my mind I was destined for bigger and better things.

      I’ve got to get out or I’ll be stuck here forever, I would panic as I sat through another night down the pub with people with whom I increasingly felt I had nothing in common. But to start a new life in London required serious funds, which is why, when I spotted the newspaper advert, I shrugged off a lifetime’s prejudice and dialled the number without a second thought.

      I didn’t tell my parents I was going for a job at the colliery. There was no point; I knew what their reaction would be. Kim wasn’t keen either, but she understood we needed to get some money together in order to start our lives together in London. Which is why I found myself here, within the gates of Markham Main for the first time, sitting nervously in front of the colliery’s three wise men.

      ‘I don’t come from a mining background and I haven’t had any experience of this sort of work,’ I told the panel of flat caps. ‘But I want to put 100 per cent into this. I’m a hard worker and a quick learner, and I’m really interested in a career in, um, coal.’

      ‘Well, Gary, you’re a bit … over-qualified for this job,’ said one of the men, glancing over my cv. ‘But you’ve got a good attitude and seem like the sort of lad who’d do well here at Markham. You’ll start the training next week. Well done, lad.’

      On the walk back home, I thought about bottling it. Now I’d actually been offered the job all my old fears bubbled back up to the surface: I was convinced I would die or be hideously maimed in a tragic accident – at the very least end up with permanently blackened fingernails. But by the time I arrived back at my front door I had made up my mind to accept; if I’m honest, there had never really been any doubt that I would after they’d told me the dizzying figures I could earn by clocking up double shifts and over-time. For five hundred quid a week Mum and Dad would understand. Eventually.

      * * *

      There was no sign of the dawn when I got on my bike just before 5 a.m. and pedalled furiously through the freezing winter darkness towards the colliery for my first day down the mine. I was carrying a flask of strong tea and the sandwiches my mum had left out for me the night before. She might not be happy about her son’s new career (in fact that would be a considerable understatement) but after a screaming argument she and Dad had at least grudgingly understood my reasons for taking the job.

      I’d already sat through four weeks of classroom-based training to prepare me and my fellow recruits for pit life. There were a few lads who, like me, saw this as an opportunity to earn a fast buck then move on to bigger and better things, but the rest of them were from mining families and landing a job at the colliery was the pinnacle of their ambition. I just couldn’t relate to their mentality: go underground, do the job, get pissed – that was all they seemed to want out of life.

      I thought they were thick and lazy, and I’m quite sure they hated me in return. They certainly thought I was a snob and picked up on the fact that I was a bit more sensitive and softly spoken, as I got called a ‘fucking poof’ on more than one occasion. Some of them had been to school with me and knew all about my dancing and singing career as a kid, so they had plenty of ammunition. They’d even take the piss out of my sandwiches, because Mum would put a bit of salad in with the filling instead of their bog-standard plain cheese spread or fish paste. But I really couldn’t give a toss. I was impatient to start raking it in as quickly as possible so I could escape this hellhole.

      I passed through the colliery gates, locked up my bike and reluctantly joined the mass of men clocking in for shifts, our breath showing like puffs of steam in the icy morning air. Then it was straight over to the changing rooms where I jostled through the throng of bodies towards my locker, avoiding eye contact as much as possible. I remember the smell of that room to this day – damp, dirty, earthy. It was the smell of the mine.

      I tried to calm my ever-increasing nerves by focusing on the process of getting myself dressed in my kit: first the thermal pants, vest and leggings, a rough cotton shirt that felt like it was made from hessian then a one- or two-piece overall over the top. Big socks and those hard, heavy boots. And finally a big navy overcoat, the Armthorpe logo proudly stitched on the breast, and a white helmet with a torch. Nothing fitted me properly. I was a skinny thing when I was younger – tall, but with hardly any meat on me. I wasn’t bred to be a miner like most of them down there.

      My heavy boots rubbed and the helmet dug into my scalp as I followed the army of navy-coated clones trudging across the yard to a low concrete bunker. This nondescript building held the lift that would plunge us over a mile and a half down into the blackness. One of the foremen counted us as we filed past him so they’d know how many of us went in and (I realised with a stab of fear) how many of us came back out again.

      You’re going to die in there! screamed my inner drama queen, always alert to potential disaster. But it was too late to turn and run, as I was carried along by the tide of bodies into the bunker, through the double set of metal lift gates and into the mouth of hell. The lift was only a couple of metres square, but there must have been about thirty men crammed into the tiny space. A packed Tube at rush hour has absolutely nothing on a colliery lift. Bloody sardines, we were, squeezed so tight that it was impossible to take a deep breath -which was probably lucky what with the reek of farts and stale beer fumes. When every last millimetre of space was filled the heavy gates were shut with a deafening clank, a siren sounded, lights flashed and then – terror. Sheer bloody terror as we fell at unimaginable speeds down, down into the bowels of the earth …

      After what seemed like a few seconds the brakes kicked in with a squealing, shuddering shriek and the lift lurched to a stop, my stomach arriving a moment or two behind it. Before I had time to recover, the doors slid open and a blast of icy cold air rushed into the stuffy lift as I was carried out by the crowd into … God knows where.

      Once my eyes had adjusted to the unexpected brightness, I could see I was I was standing in a vast underground cavern lit by huge florescent lights. Coughs, occasional shouts of laughter and the constant drip-drip-drip of water echoed around the cavernous, freezing space. Under my boots the floor was slushy and damp, like it was covered with melting black ice. From here, tunnels radiated in every direction – some like subterranean super-highways supported by soaring steel arches, others (I would discover to my horror) so tiny you’d be forced to get down on your hands and knees and crawl over the icy gravel.

      You could be trudging for miles, often in complete darkness as the lights frequently failed – and at the furthest point from the lift shaft was the blistering-hot black heart of the mine, the coalface.

      * * *

      Life down the mine was one of extremes. СКАЧАТЬ