Oh dear lord, dear lord above
This is a story from my dad, and it is so gruesome it gives me an instant headache and the cold shivers whenever I think about it too hard. I shall begin.

My dad, for years, was a miner in our sleepy Yorkshire village. After working down the pit for years he worked his way up to the control room, which controls the washing devices used to clean the dust off coal (still a messy, noisy, dangerous job, but not *quite* as bad as being a miner proper.)

He used to regularly go into what I believe was called the pit face, which was the section being liberated of it's shiny bounty at the time. A tunnel would be dug directly into the rock, and steel props would be used to bear some of the load of the ground above, and these tunnels would be used for access between faces, and to the lifts up to ground level.

My dad was down there one day, talking to a guy, standing in the access tunnel. It's dark down the pit, and you only have the gloomy light on your hard hat shining on the other person's face to see who you're talking to.

Now, the props used to hold up the tunnel were steel, adjusted by a steel peg through holes in the prop. The pressure of the mass above must have bent the steel prop slightly, causing a peg to 'pop' out of the wall with the speed and force of a bullet.

Straight into my dad's friend's temple. Just under the rim of his hard hat. He was killed instantly.

My dad says one minute he was talking to the man, and the next the bloke looked wide eyed, as his brain oozed out of the other temple.

My dad was sick. But he continued working down that pit for another 20 years. Needs must. Family to feed. Jobs scarce.

Click 'I like this' if you think my dad is very, very, very brave to have ever stepped foot in a pit again.
(Northern Lovely, Fri 22 Jun 2007, 12:27, Reply)