A soft-southerner approaches the Pitmen Painters

Introduction

1961

Through the night the anthracite, still seeming solid, still black
around a central scarlet-glow, has embered,
has powdered to a fragile silver ash and hardened to
a dunbrown clinker, eyes and mind released.
Seeping through single-glazing, cooled and dampened air
triggers shiver-spasms; the child will rake, poke, sieve
the remnants through the grate-bars to the tray;
sweep then inhale the airborne ash,
transport it to a silvered bin; screw newsprint,
strew splintering woodcuts, place clean nightblack coals
into that sculpted gratescape; will not strike
the match – this is the fire for evening.
We know that wood and paper stem from trees
and have heard about the Carboniferous age;
our understanding of a single cramped and choking, stifling,
sweat- and ache filled shift,
of women waiting for exhausted homecomings,
is nil.

1984

On a major road into Nottingham, only driving to a meeting,
striped transits sit in lay-bys, striped transits filled to brim,
dark-uniformed uninformed shadows; suddenly
accelerating, striped transits claiming right of way,
striped transits brake-screeching at whim.
No longer only ‘in press’, no longer scaled down on-screen,
full-size figures ordered to ensure it’s dole not coal.
Our understanding of humiliation, of hungry children,
of disdain and anger, forced inactivity and powerlessness,
of women’s limitless planning for survival,
is nil.

2017-18

Year upon year, with younger, older children, then no children,
driving, walking pre-set routes, standing, staring pre-set sights,
the path did not stray to the village near the coal-mining museum,
to the village which in 2005 became a coal-mining museum;
but after rerouting, and while rerooting, the village became a chosen
destination; a stripped site transformed into a desirable habitation;
a main road, a thick stripe of village green and then the bungalows,
and then the colliery rows; the houses grew gradually;
perhaps too casually, we checked and photographed,
planned and schemed;
only on first mornings, opening blinds, facing the bungalows
across the green, did we wonder how they saw this, saw us?
Our memory of the pit at work, of the active winding tower,
of the car park full to bursting, of the sudden flooded end
to labour, to earning, to a landscape, to a lifestyle, our memory
of the day the hi-reach excavators tore the winding towers
from their foundations, to lie in dust in pieces, to be transported,
to be erased, to be replaced,
is nil.

A long view and a darker magnification

Harry Wilson, Ashington Colliery, 1936, oil on paper.
& Oliver Kilbourn, Ashington Pit Heaps at Night, 1936, pastel & watercolour on paper on hardboard.

Daylit distance frames my comfort zone; in geometric forms,
heapsteads and smoking chimneys are ambered
in a shaft of sunlight, downscaled in size and time;
the Sainte-Victoire spoil heap in silver-grey looms,
but only gently, a backdrop without threat;
coal as commodity, no longer as geology,
surfaced, settled safely into trucks
departing south, to redhot fireplaces where fantasies are mined,
while putters, fillers, drawers, ponies blend blackly and invisibly
into the drift.

At risk, at night, not quite dark, lost
in this landscape where the pitmen,
have carried the blackness out from
the drift and washed it into the earth;
drawn in to danger
the unsplit slate sky weighs down
on unseen props and lids;
chinks of moonlight play shadows with
the spontaneously ignited spoil, tanned
scarlet, ochre, amber flaming plumes
more of coloured smoke than fire;
buildings blending into gloom, and
between two heaps, it seems,
appears the sycamore from the gap.

Hewing

The Miner, Lesley Brownrigg c 1935, oil or walpamur on card stuck to 3-ply.

Shots fired, the hewer sets his stance,
strength through thighs and calves, a balanced

body leaning, back arched and biceps swelling,

eyes cast down, the coal becoming lumps

splintering from whole rock-face

hidden an eternity;
is this work at depth a solitary task,

can you hear your fellow-worker,
do you sign or lip-read the craic, the banter,

which breaks the shift into more manageable minutes;
must your minds be ever-focused,

do they escape?
Is there a rhythm and a muscle-memory,
does such core, resilient strength
come naturally, unthinkingly, from daily repetition,

or, do you, shift on shift, with each descent,

think yourself into a coping strategy?
Which muscles, tendons, ligaments
are strained or strengthened as you break the coal?
Your taut-drawn sinews speak the immensity
of just five minutes of this toil and your colours

hide the taste and texture of

this deep pit-blackened air.

Language: only filtered and mediated by lived experience?

Jimmy Floyd, Bait Time, 1946, watercolour and bodycolour on card.
& Oliver Kilbourn, Bait Time, 1937, watercolour on 3-ply.

With sustainable water containers joined at the hip,
with time in conditioned air to consider healthy living,
with legislated break-times for five-a-day leaves and fruits,
to us, bait is an elusive dialect term, sunk

into a half-caught sentence of unbroken flow,

rasped from dust-ingrained palates
by figures in shadows; maybe there is banter and craic,
maybe slow breathing, maybe munching, swilling, swallowing,
maybe a comment about the face, about the air, about the hours left to toil,
about the match on Saturday; is there exhausted silence too?
The fluent partnership of pony and man,

funnelled through a fulsome mutual graft,
a rhythmic unceasing instinctive motion
pauses,
for a moment of tenderness;
here, my unlived experience excludes me;

no more comprehension of the flowing wordstream

than of the ever-moving coaltubs and the labour which enables it,

no comprehension either was the language spoken slow and ‘clear’,

and no ability to undertake a single moment of that toil.

Trapping & Trapped

Trapping – my first job, Jimmy Floyd, 1959, oil on hardboard

Duke Street 2am, Oliver Kilbourn, c1937, watercolour on paper on fibreboard

The Coal Company paternally assured

wrap-around welfare, in architecture,

personnel, in council and counsel;

the Coal Company paternally allotted

low-rent houses, an allowance of coal,

a garden with space for carrots, onions, potatoes

a backyard private enough for bathing;

eleven rows, just a walk to the pit;

and a restless artist painted the night scene

when co-workers in that perilous toil were sleeping;

but that assurance and allotment had generations trapped…..

Trapping was once the work of children of nine

Slowly, periodically, that age was raised

to thirteen for boys, girls banned below ground;

but in thin mines, where the height

of underground roads is low, where

the records of birth-dates are lost, and where

inspectors do not appear,

such laws are remote in such darkness.

Trapping was the opening (and closing) of doors

for ponies and coal tubs, a stool and a torch,

long waits in the dark, muffled cries in the dark,

grinding and squealing, dull thumps in the dark,

choking dark air, the weight of the door,

fed fears in the dark,

and a growing hunger and thirst,

a relentless weariness pressing on eyelids

and all in a darkness

where unseen clocks inched childhood away.

‘The drawer was nearly a shrine’

(George Laidler, son of Fred Laidler)

The open drawer, Fred Laidler c1950, oil on fibreboard.
Hauler foundation, Fred Laidler c1948, oil on card.

Carpenters and timbermen might seem
a breed apart from hewers, putters, firemen, deputies;
but when a prop is set securely in the seam, its origin
lies with the saw and plane in such a working drawer
and mirrors its construction, its cared-for order, its precision;
both drawer and inserted prop integral to a pride,
to self-esteem, to the safety of a team, to work well done.
A working drawer, tools removed, replaced, used daily
cleaned daily, the inset fashioned with the saws,
and planes, compartments sized to fit
a bradawl, chisel, set square, hammer,
all sharp as new, all wood unblemished
but handled on each shift and freshly polished;
If there is pressure to conform, to a norm,
it is not oppression, but a comradeship,
that willingly, embracingly, concords that it is right.
My garaged tools, in disarray, make my distance,
my separation greater and when I hear a current generation
speak also of their working ‘shrine’, I know
if I shall better understand I must make my drawer so.

Pit incident

Arthur Whinnom 1936, oil on muslin on hardboard.

Oil on muslin; muslin as a net curtain, blurring
and obscuring lines, muslin insoaking blood,
muslin as a shroud; oil
may clot, may be pungent, may
have a sheen that turns opaque.
Sky heavy with incident,
pit entrance heavy with the blackness
that comes from no-light, that comes
from walls of coal.
People with purpose, moving and carrying,
still and praying, still and looking
away, into other eyes;

heads-down hunched with a stretcher weight,
heads-down hunched for protection to come;
faces blurred and uniform,
an emotion in common, unspoken, buried
by fears and memories and sadnesses.
We have learned about the horror at Hartley
and its legacy in law, but ‘disasters’
may muslin-shroud the everyday,
the common incidents at the pit.
This ‘Pit Incident’.

Life in bold colour

‘Ashington was once the biggest pit village in the world. It had over 5000 miners living and working there.’ https://historicengland.org.uk/services-skills/education/educational-images/first-row-ashington-7426 

Saturday night at the club, Oliver Kilbourn 1940, oil on fibreboard.
Station Bridge, Oliver Kilbourn, 1950, oil on card.

The community below ground feeds the village

while surfaced thousands join in nurture, join
in enterprise, and in family and friendships,
share along the colliery rows;
all life is mirrored monthly in the pages of
The Ashington Collieries Magazine,
and the village values by those elected in the union,
to the council, in the institute,
serving thousands as their equals.
The village goes out into the light,
the thousands throng in shared streets,

choose colours to wear amongst the brightest buildings,
shop socially, on foot, close to home,
in car-free streets, where cycles and horses
give way; slowly and indulgently,
they
bathe in sunrays from blue skies spreading somewhere
behind the coastal clouding;
they
illuminate the rooms, throng again,
exult in close proximities, in the song and the keystrokes,
in the craic and the cool liquids washing in throat,
faces focused, still, always with respect,
as one of their number speaks, sings, acts,
shows practised art and skill;
they
take pride in being a thousandth part

of the biggest pit village in the country.

Growing and showing

Old man with leeks – Oliver Kilbourn 1940 Watercolour and pastel on card

Leeks will look different for eating and showing,

stowed nonchalantly under one arm at the end

of a cycle of seed-preservation, sowing and potting,

rooting, shooting and good manure mulching,

tending and leafing, up-earthing and blanching,

nitrogen-feeding, forming a trunk, fibrous,

swelling and swelling

in concentric circles, lengthening skywards,

whitening, ripening, drip-feeding, drip-watering,

boosting by talking, till ready for taking.

Is your path through the town, in the air, in the light,

to your larder, your kitchen, or the institute show-hall?

There, you will pause before taking your number,

choosing your table space, out-glowing the others,

then travelling home with a feeling of loss;

your underarm empty, constantly jolting

to recover what’s missing, while you

mirror the earth in the brown cloth you’re wearing

and your senses still filled with a mulch and

the scent of white allium, and the breeze stirring

long-flowing leaves on your thighs

with an institute prize-cup alive in your eyes?