Sharon Hadley-Ford
Writer
Coal
I was three when my dad joined his co-workers in the miners’ strike in 1972. So, I don’t know if some of these practices began then, when pay day didn’t come. Being too small to know what was going on was a godsend. Perhaps my family of six plus two grandmothers were already poor and no-one ever sat me down and explained it to me. I took it as normal to have squares of last week’s newspaper in the outside lavatory instead of toilet paper. Likewise, I thought nothing of having egg and chips for tea most nights. I also believed that everyone used old shoes and pieces of tree to keep the fire alight.
Given that the fire was so important, my sister, Sarah, invented numerous ways to make collecting the firewood a treat. Like explorers, we trekked to ‘The Private,’ which was the local name for the nearby woods where we’d climb trees and make dens. For a long time, I hadn’t understood that the woods got their name from a black and white sign that was hammered to a tired fence on the edge of the trees. I simply followed along, as I was the smallest in the litter. We spent hours playing hide and seek within the chirp-studded silence throughout the shades of green. Oak trees spread their elderly arms providing shelter from April showers.
We sat cross-legged, making battle plans on a violet carpet of bluebells that smelt like summer. Conifers stood tall and proud around us, guarding the jam sandwiches in our den. When daylight dissolved behind the trees and our stomachs grumbled at us, we knew that it was time to leave. We would then drag home the scraps of fallen trees, our swords, and our broomsticks for the fire, to add to the pile of time-worn shoes which accompanied the coal.
Every six weeks, our blue doored coal store was filled by ‘the coal man’. It was a fun game, I thought, to follow the coal delivery lorry and collect the pieces that fell onto the road whenever the lorry stopped to make a delivery. I think I thought it was fun. Maybe my brother had told me to think it was, so I believed it must have been. I recall my face aching with happiness when I carried the haul home to give to my dad. He would be sat in his tired armchair with the coal dust gathered into his eyelashes, like black eyeliner. He looked sleepy from being in the dark below the grass all day. I remember that sometimes the radio would be playing and he’d be snoring.
Several years later the miners’ strike of 1984 marked a change in me. I was fifteen and old enough to know that some games weren’t fun. Stupid games like singing made up songs to kids when they walk home from school. This is when I first encountered an alternative use for the word ‘scab.’ It was a friend from across the road, who told me that those kids called us scabs because our dads had gone across the picket line to work. I had always loved my dad for getting the coal from underground and sharing it with everyone. But I must admit that, back then, on the inside, I didn’t love him for that. On the outside, I pretended not to care, and I pretended to like my egg and chips. I learnt a lesson that year. I learnt that money isn’t a problem when you have it, and I vowed to work hard to get my own.
Private Ford - 24738484
At barely 17 years old, Private Ford stood crookedly to attention during his first morning on parade. The early August sun warmed the Fallingbostel air, tricking everyone into thinking they were abroad on holiday on that day in 1986. Below his Staffordshire Regiment beret one of his eyes were purple and half an eyebrow was missing. Ruminating, he recalls the poker-faced sergeant, with his pungent smell of an ashtray, questioning the soldier to his right. “New boy, where did ya get those bruises from?” After what felt like an hour of squirming, he explained that some of the other soldiers had gone into his room and attacked him in his sleep. The motionless sergeant stared and snapped, “in my office after parade.” Even though Private Ford knew that he was next in line for the interrogation, he couldn’t help feeling freer than he had in years, away from “the evil bitch of a stepmom who was back home in Cannock.”
A movie began in Private Ford’s mind, replaying how he had also got bruises last night; his first night at the battalion. He thought of his Manchester United bedding and remembered that he fell asleep while someone cried in their bunk in the crowded ten-man room. He recounted, “I woke up and tried to get up as I was being pinned down and tied to my bed. The three-foot metal frame was having bungee cords wrapped around it, holding me tightly in place under my quilt.” An inch of light fed him snippets of information as he tussled, while the shots of pain began landing when the pummelling commenced. Grabbing furiously with his flailing hands he caught hold of one of the weapons. His grip weakened and it broke free from his grasp, and the hammering continued. Confused and dazed, he later realised it was an army issue sock stuffed with a bar of soap. “Sprog, don’t say a word about this tomorrow, you sprog bastard!” A sharp bite down on the inside of his cheek brought a metallic taste of blood. Time was stumbling like his battered body. All around him was a frenzy of movement as the pack circled. A bolt of lightning struck his left eye, forcing him to halt his breath. He felt heavy hands on his head, along with scraping sensations and a low buzzing noise emanating from the piercing pain on his face and in his skull. Next came sharp light from the door opening wide; a swarm of low voices; then the wolves were gone.
Stillness followed, while Private Ford tried to piece his cluttered thoughts together and stop himself from falling apart. Strangely, he felt relieved. He was rigid from the burst of adrenaline, the spikiness of the anger, but he was mostly glad that it was over. He had heard stories about the tradition of initiations while he was in training camp, but he wasn’t sure how to separate the truth from the tales. Now that he had arrived at the battalion he knew the facts.
After minutes of quietness, two lads from adjacent bunks got up and stealthily began untying the cords that had held Private Ford a prisoner. They grabbed an arm each and hoisted him to his wobbling feet, before disappearing back into their bunks like retreating ants. They too were glad it was over, and guilty of being glad it hadn’t happened to them. Private Ford remembered getting to the bathroom and bending over the porcelain sink to find hair falling down his face. Rattled, he looked in the mirror, and took a short breath as he saw his left eye, angry and swollen along with patches of scarlet scratches on his face and neck. He splashed cold water to his cheeks. Mouth open in disbelief, he saw an asymmetrical face stare back as realised that the men had shaved off half of his eyebrow. With his head low, he began the shuffle back to his bunk with his arms, legs and ribs throbbing with pain.
“Where did ya get those bruises from?” spat the sergeant into Private Ford’s face, waking him from his recollections. “I sleepwalked and fell” he uttered. “And ya eyebrow?” questioned the sergeant, with a creased brow. “I always have them like this, sarge” was the reply. The sergeant grunted like a wild boar then marched on along the straight line of soldiers. Private Ford studied the baby blue sky and exhaled: whatever happens, it’s better than being at home.