It is funny how things are connected sometimes. I spent Sunday morning browsing books in Borders with the lovely Pippa and J. I met these folk through attending a Cordell festival and Pippa was the one who introduced me to Kate Rusby aka the girl who couldn't fly, who also sang the song my young man - which is right up there on the list of the saddest songs I have ever heard.
From a lazy morning to an active afternoon where I eventually ended up at Cefn Coed Colliery Museum. I have pictures, but it means getting up for me to add them now - maybe tomorrow and I'll do the links too. Wandering round blogspace this evening, I visited a fave blog of mine - downshifting path- and she has a post up about the coal house, the prog that BBC Wales are running. And incidentally has a little you tube clip of said my young man song, which, also incidently, was the song I sung in the arts festival in Blaenafan in April. So, connections you see?
My dad was born in 1927 and of course I remember his mother, my nanna, telling me stories of the 1926 strike. I remember myself the miners strike in the eighties and the collossal unemployment and depression that followed in its wake when Thatcher closed Britain's industries down. These events are then very real to me because of the stories and mental pictures I have of them.
It is something that gets me sickeningly angry, the way things do when there is no way to rectify them. Britain used to have an industry, now we have industrial heritage. Dont get me wrong, there is nothing romantic about mining, scoliosis, malformed backs and blind pit ponies. My dad preferred the Palestinian War to going back down the pit (which he first went down at the age of fourteen). He hailed his national service call up with great relief and stayed in the army for many years. But the fact remains that Wales and the rest of Industrial Britain was taken for everything it had and then dropped and left for dead when deemed of no further use. Leaving communities staggering or gutted, relying on benefit and loan sharks.
...I wonder if the Beeb will show that?
From a lazy morning to an active afternoon where I eventually ended up at Cefn Coed Colliery Museum. I have pictures, but it means getting up for me to add them now - maybe tomorrow and I'll do the links too. Wandering round blogspace this evening, I visited a fave blog of mine - downshifting path- and she has a post up about the coal house, the prog that BBC Wales are running. And incidentally has a little you tube clip of said my young man song, which, also incidently, was the song I sung in the arts festival in Blaenafan in April. So, connections you see?
My dad was born in 1927 and of course I remember his mother, my nanna, telling me stories of the 1926 strike. I remember myself the miners strike in the eighties and the collossal unemployment and depression that followed in its wake when Thatcher closed Britain's industries down. These events are then very real to me because of the stories and mental pictures I have of them.
It is something that gets me sickeningly angry, the way things do when there is no way to rectify them. Britain used to have an industry, now we have industrial heritage. Dont get me wrong, there is nothing romantic about mining, scoliosis, malformed backs and blind pit ponies. My dad preferred the Palestinian War to going back down the pit (which he first went down at the age of fourteen). He hailed his national service call up with great relief and stayed in the army for many years. But the fact remains that Wales and the rest of Industrial Britain was taken for everything it had and then dropped and left for dead when deemed of no further use. Leaving communities staggering or gutted, relying on benefit and loan sharks.
...I wonder if the Beeb will show that?
