One of my uncles (my mother's brother-in-law) was a miner in the Durham coalfield in the early fifties. I can still see him coming home black all over and sitting in a tin bath in front of the fire with the clothes horse around it as a screen. He later got a job at Vickers driving an overhead crane, and it was a family joke that he started at the bottom and made it to the very top. Just about all of my ex-wife's cousins and uncles were Derbyshire miners, as was her father - a Pole who came to Britain via Siberia and the Eighth Army. I have spent many a Sunday lunchtime in Miners Welfare clubs playing crib or dominoes with him and his mates.
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