I was brought up in a mining town, we lived in a rented two up two down terraced house. Upstairs there were two bedrooms and a bathroom, downstairs was a back room, a front room and a kitchen. The back room was mainly where we lived, consisting of a dining table with its four chairs, three old fireside chairs and a sideboard. There was no central heating just coal fires. The front room, we used only on special occasions such as Christmas when our family visited, and was furnished with a three piece suite, consisting of a settee, two club armchairs and my music centre, which I recently set up in there, and of course the obligatory fireplace.
My father had been minor who worked at the coal face and unlike many of his colleagues who expected their sons to follow in their footsteps, my father did everything in his power to dissuade me from going down the mine. Right from an early age he would tell me the horror stories of working the coal face, from crawling on his stomach to work the coal, to pulling men out when the roof sometimes caved in. For as long as I could remember he would stress the importance of getting an education and emphasize that I should work hard at school to gain qualifications, and I did. I studied and worked hard and luckily didn't find it too difficult.
The effect of all that studying was that I had few friends and those I did have I lost when I passed the scholarship and went to high school. The local kids starting calling me a nerd, swat and even less flattering names. What made things worse that I was not very good looking and so thin I looked like skeleton, even the local girls avoided me. Nevertheless I worked damn hard.
Three months into my first term at high school we had a swimming test, now I wasn't very good at sports and could just about swim, but thankfully I wasn't the worst, a few kids couldn't swim at all. The swimming teacher pulled me to one side and asked me to come and see him in his office after school.
"Ah Bennett, come in take a seat. I watched you today you're not a very good swimmer, but that isn't my main concern it's your physique, I don't think that I have ever seen someone so thin as you."
"Sir it doesn't matter how much I eat I don't put weight on."
"I understand, but I would like you to consider a gentle work programme to begin to build your body up and it won't be a five minute thing it will take time. What I propose is that you attend one hour swimming classes after school twice a week preferably on a Monday and Thursday and I will teach you to swim properly. There will be others there in a similar situation to you and of course more advanced swimmers. Please think about it and let me know"
Well I did let him know and for the first year it was just swimming however the second year he introduced me to dumbbells which I was allowed to use at home. I suppose it was about eighteen months before I began to notice and changes in my body with a slight development of arm and leg muscles.
By the time I was ready to leave high school I was a pretty good swimmer, and my body had developed very nicely. My muscles, now quite substantial had increased in size more than I could ever imagine, and they weren't the only thing that developed, much to my surprise.
Having passed all my exams with flying colours, l received a scholarship from several universities in the area. My father encouraged me to pick the best one knowing that I would be living away from home for long periods, much to my mother's regret. Having visited the pit head many times and was fascinated with the machinery I knew I wanted to be an engineer and therefore I studied design, manufacturing, coupled with business studies.
Although I was much more confident, again I never made many friends and rarely spoke to girls. It wasn't that I was afraid or even uninterested in them, it was just the fact that I didn't have the time and it always seemed to me that was the one thing a girlfriend demands of you, is time. I knew things were paying off for me because my exam results were always first class and the lecturers would talk to me outside classes and we would discuss particular project and they would ask for my opinion. Finally I finished uni and returned home.
Over the years many mines closed, a few continued to operate with a very much reduced workforce, one of which was my father's and eventually even it closed, although it was one of the last. Like many he was made redundant receiving a decent redundancy package with the money being invested in Government Bonds because it was guaranteed 100% safe. Within a year of being made redundant dad was diagnosed with Pneumoconiosis. We were advised that his life expectancy would be no longer than five years and that was providing he would co-operate with the hospital take all his medication and extreme care of himself, which we knew he wouldn't. Mother and I were devastated, for my part I knew my father, mother too, had made many sacrifices to get me educated and now it was my turn to look after them.
When I left University it didn't take me long to find a job, I saw and applied for a position as assistant manager at a large engineering company. I was offered an interview, bought myself a new suit so I could at least make a good impression and eventually I was offered the position. As an assistant manager I received a decent salary and a company car which I could use for private use providing I paid for my own petrol, which seemed fair enough. The guy that I was the assistant to, came up from the shop floor and was brilliant on the engineering side but useless on the business management side, so I suppose that's where I came in, to support him.
My father died approximately three years after the diagnosis, and for eight months I watched my mother grieve and mope around day in day out, letting her life go to rack and ruin. The deterioration of her appearance got too much for me. One morning I came down stairs and while mum was cooking breakfast I moved in behind her put my hands on her hips and kissed her on the cheek.
"What was that for?"
"Mum if we can sit down tonight and have a serious talk I'll tell you what that was for."
"Are you going to shout at me and make me cry?"
"I can't imagine why you would think I would shout at you, however, I do have things to say to you which you may not be too happy about."
As soon as I arrived home from work that night she began to quiz me about what I wanted to talk to her about, it must have been on her mind all day. I managed to persuade her to wait until after we had eaten and cleared away and were sitting comfortably before we began to talk.
"Mum it's been eight months since dad died, and you're still grieving, you're making yourself ill and everybody else with your depression. You have no pride in your looks you mope around like an old bag lady, the difference in you now to how you used to be is unbelievable. You've got to stop it and stop now."
Suddenly mum burst into tears, I felt responsible, I was too harsh with her, but something had to be done, she couldn't continue the way she was, perhaps I was the wrong person to try to and get her to change. I moved over to her and encouraged her to move over on the chair giving me a corner to perch on. I put an arm around her, she buried her face in my shoulder.
"Mum you can't go on as you have been, you must change, there are some suggestions that I would like to make that I think might help. I have been thinking that I might like to take you out some evening to a restaurant or to the cinema. Perhaps we could go to the theatre. Other times we could go for a ride in the car to the coast or countryside, even visit various places of interest. But not while you're like this for a start your clothes are old and unfashionable and now I'm working we have enough money to buy you new clothes. However I'm not prepared to take you shopping until we have something decent for you to go out in, those clothes we can buy off the internet. What do you think?"
Mum nodded her head although it was still buried in my shoulder.
"Perhaps we could look together for something over the weekend."
