January 2018: A premonition

Inner hope or outer hope, what's it to be?
Hope and Anchor looks the best bet all round

I got a missed call from Israel today (the country of origin now flashes up on the screen). I have no idea who it could have been; most likely a wrong number but you never can tell. I mean do we really know anything when coincidences, happenstances, flukes, twists of fate and even deja vu come to be such a potent force in our lives. I've been lucky all my life. I mean I wanted to write and I do, make films and I have, sing my own songs and have people like them and that happens too, and it might sound dramatic but I have also nearly bled to death after an operation, been run over by a car, stabbed, shot, fallen off a motor bike, fallen off a ladder and driven a car head on into a brick wall; but I'm still standing, as Elton once sang. Its been a busy life. But I wanted to talk about a premonition which happened sixty years ago but I have only just been told the story. When I was a wee boy, as opposed to a wee man, two going on three, my dad would put me to bed. I confess I have no recollection of that time, in what I recall as happy years in Burnside Road, Arniston, before an ill-fated move which I am not sure I really recovered from. Anyway, he had put me in a cot (which I do remember, we had two, a big one - where I slept - and a small one for the baby (Debs then Mags). According to my dad's telling only last week, one night he was tucking me in and I said, 'Dinnae go tae yer work tonight, Daddy... Daddy dinnae go tae work.' (that's the first I have ever been told or knew that I called him Daddy, which I rather like). But the words held more force than that. My dad grew up with a deeply superstitious mother, 'Dinnae put thae new shoes on the table - its bad luck!' She had a bad luck story for every turn. Took her years to get over my mum breaking a mirror in her house (seven years come to think on it). As an adult I would have thought it a bit daft. I have only been off sick one day in twenty five years of working at the University of Winchester, far less taking a fly day off. He wouldn't have missed a shift for anything - after all, you didn't get paid. But after a chat with my mum they agreed it was a 'premonition' that he shouldn't go. Well, guess what happened in Arniston Colliery that night? We take this idea for granted, especially these days when we are much more cynical, more secular and more in tune with ideas. Does anyone really believe in horoscope and premonition? But the history of such things isn't as clear as it could be. Indeed, we still suspend our disbelief for films and books and the like, mostly because at the time we want to believe it. And then there are dreams; if I am honest, I think all of my dreams have actually come true and maybe I have some new ones too. I wonder if in hoping I could have predicted that away back in Arniston? Who knows? But back to the premonition - after a sleepless night we discovered that... oh... nothing at all untoward happened on the night shift, nothing at all, that night in Arniston Colliery. Well all I can say, in defence of my premonition, is thank goodness he didn't go to the night shift that night, because if he had he really might have been the trigger to some catastrophe. Well you never know do you? His not going avoided that! As I said, you never can tell. I mean do we really know anything when coincidences, happenstances, flukes, twists of fate and even deja vu come to be such a potent force in our lives? I wrote this song (coming up) thinking about Allepo but also about the enormous homeless problem in the UK - its huge down south, here in Brighton. We were a working class family growing up, with a coal miner father and school cleaning mother, but we grew up in a house which had loads of laughs and premonitions. And the point of this song is, surely somewhere to live should be a basic human right! Forgive the recording, its in my attic, but you'll get the gist of it:

January 2018: My dad the stripper

We took a drive down to Dunbar to see the harbour (and a good chunk of the Scots against the predatory English in history). To be honest, its one of those small Scottish towns that has been there forever (since the year 600) with fishing and a harbour underpinning its existence - though its dominated by Dunbar Castle and historical stories of battles and Mary Queen o' Scots and Stevenson-like adventures. We were just there for the fresh air (it was bracing) and a look at the sea (a bit too early to catch sight of a seal or two). But inevitably we ended up chatting.There is something especially endearing in getting my ageing dad to talk about his early life. Finding out things you never knew about, that he was a 'stripper' is just one of the great joys I heard this  week. 

Having lined himself up an apprenticeship as a butcher, my dad (who gets letters from the Inland Revenue addressed to Andrew Melrose, Jr, which I guess makes me Andrew the Third and my nephew Andrew the Fourth) was awoken by his mother shortly after his fourteenth birthday to be told he was going to work at the pit. He protested, reminding her of the apprenticeship due to start next week, but she replied, 'We need the money now.' And so it was, a neighbour called at 5.30 in the morning to walk him down to the day-shift at the pit. His mother packed him off with a snap box with two jam sandwiches and two cigarettes. When he asked about the cigarettes (because he didn't smoke) she told him, 'You're a miner now, all miners smoke.' And so did he from that day until he was made redundant decades later. When he stopped being a miner he stopped smoking, it was a simple decision. And then he began talking about those days. On your knees, working in a space about three foot high, 'stripping' the seam (we get to him being a stripper eventually), digging the coal out by hand, shoving in a prop to stop the roof coming down on your head, and then pushing on, stripping more coal. 'In those days you could be on your knees for seven hours in a three foot high seam,' he said. Arniston pit was better, the seam was six feet high and at five two he could easily stand up. Though he said it was scarier because the higher the seam's roof the easier it fell. Of course then things became mechanised and he became an explosives expert as a mine driver with a team working for him. Things changed, but a working life underground; it takes some thinking about. This song is very much on the surface but the title suits him - and it takes me back to when I was learning to play harmonica and guitar together - which I will post some time: