
How my father gave me a terrifying lesson at 10 - arethuza
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-32961309
======
kh_hk
My dad worked for some years on a coal mine when he was 16. Mind you, this was
on a remote village during the post-war era on Spain. He has countless
histories even though he does not share them often; smelly rooms with bunk
beds, cold winters, or fishing on a pond with dynamite. He later moved from
there to the big city, took correspondence studies on electricity and started
a tour around multiple companies and projects as an electrician until he
settled on one company (a company that started small but later became one of
the biggest multinational corporations of pool products) where he worked until
retiring.

Sometimes he would do side jobs fixing pools and fancy installations on the
high profile clients. I've been there with him helping out. He once told me:
"see these big houses, two pools and an spa? They think they need all this,
but have no time to enjoy themselves. Me? I have everything I ever wanted."

He has been all his life self learning just as a pastime. His side project
being going back to his old village to build a well and water installations to
help farmers irrigate their fields. He even used water pressure to make a kind
of 'protocol' to communicate different panels. When you go there, it's crazy
land. He's been iterating over his initial design for more than 40 years, and
he keeps going at it now at 79. One thing he usually says, contrary to what
most people think is that life is long, really long. There's time for
everything.

We come from two different worlds. To me it's not just about him being a role
model but showing him gratitude for all he has taught me.

~~~
kamaal
>>"see these big houses, two pools and an spa? They think they need all this,
but have no time to enjoy themselves. Me? I have everything I ever wanted."

Unfortunately a lot things have changed since those days. In fact a few
centuries back you could have a lot of fun in life doing nothing at all. These
days things are so organized, anybody who falls out of line is likely to
through a great deal of suffering. Healthcare is very organized and expensive,
you can't get a decent job today without education and the overall society is
moving towards a trend where not having a certain set of things can leave you
with social disability.

>>One thing he usually says, contrary to what most people think is that life
is long, really long. There's time for everything.

This is very true, and this is why if you are going to live really long you
better have a good cache of savings for your retirement.

~~~
rthomas6
See here's the thing. Happiness is a state of mind, not a physical mode of
being. Many people, including you, think that a person needs some parity with
an invisible standard in order to feel contentment. But that's not true. You
don't need anyone's permission to have fun, and you don't need to obtain
anything to start enjoying your life.

A few centuries ago, when you say people could have fun doing nothing at all,
what you call "a great deal of suffering" in contemporary society is actually
materially _better_ than even the middle class lived back then. Much better.
It's just that people are wired to compare themselves to their community, and
by default that's what people base their self-worth and contentment on, unless
they do some careful introspection and consciously change their source of
sense of self-esteem.

A few centuries ago, the average family lived on a small farm with little
education, no running water, no electricity, and little excess. A large
fraction of the children would die before their first birthday, and dying of
bacterial infection was quite likely at any age. The boys could expect nothing
more than a life full of hard physical work on the farm, and the girls could
expect to get married or, if they were very lucky, get a profession like
nursing or teaching. Yet, this average family was _happy_ , and it wasn't
because of their material possessions or adequate healthcare (clearly). It was
because they were grateful for what they had, and because of a supportive
community who were just like them and were always there for them.

You're missing the point of the quote you pasted. His father had everything he
ever wanted because he didn't value material wealth, and was perfectly content
with what I imagine you (and probably me too) would call "suffering", because
he had friends, family, hobbies, time, and relatively good health. That's
really all we need.

~~~
toyg
_> Yet, this average family was happy_

That's a huge and unjustified assumption. They likely were exactly as unhappy
as a comparable 'average' family today: they would envy their neighbours who
owned a better horse, they would fight among themselves (a lot, and with real
physical violence among family members), their children would run away and
never return, their weakest elements would be bullied mercilessly, and so on
and so forth.

Life could be absolutely hellish, even more so for people who did not fit
their (fewer and stronger) expected roles.

 _> It was because they were grateful for what they had_

Or rather they were thankful they survived to see another day. That's not
happiness, that's just relief.

 _> and because of a supportive community who were just like them and were
always there for them._

They were also ready to judge, gossip, discriminate, bully and cast away
anyone who wouldn't fit the strict rules of very hypocritical and moralistic
communities.

I can agree that modern consumerism is hardly a paradise, but the past was
much worse and there is no reason to look back with rose-tinted glasses. The
past was worse in _every_ respect.

~~~
rthomas6
Yes, if you didn't fit the cultural mold, I have no doubt life would be very
hard for you back then. Also I am by no means arguing that the past was in any
way better to the present, just that it is quite possible to be happy without
a lot of material wealth.

However, in regard to the probable happiness of the average 18th century
family, I still think most research on happiness would disagree with you.
People seem to have a default level of contentment that varies only
temporarily when major positive or negative changes occur in their lives:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill)
This suggests that being thankful they survived to see another day, while grim
by our standards, actually _was_ real happiness.

Exceptions to this, that is, things that make lasting changes to one's
happiness include:

* A supportive community of peers with whom you meet regularly

* Regular physical exertion

* Regular time for quiet reflection

* Marriage

* True and devout belief in a religion.

Our average 18th century family had all of these.

On the other hand, modern society has a greater capacity for a person to self-
actualize and get into a path where they are able to regularly enter a state
of flow, which is also shown to increase happiness. But this is only an
increase capability, not the norm.

~~~
toyg
None of those elements are necessarily missing from "average" modern society,
nor are they necessarily positive things (especially "true and devout belief"
in a religion one would not get to choose -- in fact, most "devout" people
were anything but, they just went along with it because society forced them
to; "marriage" is also a weird one, to be honest, considering how unhappy it
can be).

What they _certainly_ had more than us, though, was the certainty that they
would not get to choose when or how to interact with such elements. They were
fundamentally resigned to a life of reaction, rather than conscious action, as
it had been the case for millennia. Again, they were _content_ or _relieved_
at the best of times, rather than actually _happy_. It's an incredible
achievement of the XIX and XX century that increasingly large numbers of
people can decide what "pursuing happiness" actually means _for themselves_.

~~~
sanoli
> None of those elements are necessarily missing from "average" modern society

It's not missing only as long as it is available as a choice, but what the
parent meant was probably that the majority of people don't live like that
anymore.

~~~
toyg
Last I checked, people in pretty much any country still get married and
declare themselves religious in overwhelming majority. We don't have stats for
physical activity (which is declining, yes, but for a majority? Probably not)
and "quiet time".

------
fit2rule
My version of this, with my Dad, was when I was precocious 16 year old,
failing highschool because I was spending all my time hacking code, smoking
pot, and girlfriends. Not a bit of schoolwork was being done, and my Dad was
having none of it.

So he gave me a summer job. In the hot Australian sunshine, I was sent off to
be a labourer on building sites. Since I was the young blood, the brickies and
other construction types gave me the shit jobs .. moving piles of bricks from
one end of the universe to the other, shovelling shit from one end of the
universe to the other, getting lunch and ciggies and mud and bricks to the
brickies from one end of the universe to the other. It was monotonous, hot,
boring work, and I hated getting up at 5am every day just to get there on
time, and work until the sun went down every day, just to go to bed in time to
get up again and start moving shit from one end of the universe to the other.

It did teach me a lesson, and that lesson - which dear reader I hope you
understand - is that work is good for you. It expands your universe and gives
you a life beyond the realms of the little box we're otherwise born with.

So, at the end of summer, I took my hard-earned wages, bought myself a new
computer, got back to hacking, split up with my girlfriend, and got myself the
hell out of that situation.

And I've never looked back.

Well, now I look back .. because now I'm the Dad, and more than anything else
in the world I want my kids to grow up knowing that hard work is good for you,
but smart work is better. Don't know how its going to happen, but that's the
joy of fatherhood, innit ..

~~~
k__
"work is good for you. It expands your universe and gives you a life beyond
the realms of the little box we're otherwise born with"

That's the sad truth for many people. I mean most people even find their love
interests at work.

I was unemployed for about 1 1/2 years now and I didn't miss work for a
second.

I coded what I wanted, I learned music instruments, I did sports, had much
time for friends and slept till noon. After half a year I couldn't even
imagine a life with a job anymore. I had so much todo even without a job.

~~~
fit2rule
Nobody said work is life.

I'm able to do amazing things with my life now, because I worked hard. Work is
only a part of the picture - but its an important part, and if you try to
occlude it from life, you will eventually get bit. The default state of the
Universe involves entropy; working, on anything, is the only way to change
that.

~~~
k__
You're right. It just triggers my bite-reflex if people talk about how good
work is for your life...

I often have the feeling for many people work IS life and often not a good one
:\

------
PaulRobinson
The coal mines were tough places way back when. I know a few old boys from the
mines in Wales and Lancashire, less so over in Yorkshire.

Hard. As. Fuck.

Almost fearless. Grateful for a quiet life now they're out of it.

I know one guy who bought a very small mine in the High Peak which he and a
mate thought there was 3-4 years work left in for them. Just them. On their
own. Tiny, tiny seam. Off they went. Utterly bonkers.

I grew up in a mill town myself, and all the local towns have stories about
kids being put to work and the odd one being killed. My school trips were to
Litton Mill, where the working conditions were once so bad there was a
Parliamentary enquiry into the child deaths there.

What I'm getting to is, I am unbelievably lucky to live in the age I do where
I get to work with my brain, I was able to get a decent education despite
relatively modest beginnings and I would never, ever, ever look down on a
manual labourer like a coal miner: they were tough bastards.

And it is of course now mostly past tense - not many mines left in the UK,
despite there still being plenty of coal down there.

~~~
jacquesm
Not many in the UK, but worldwide there are plenty of mines and that story
could take place in the present day quite easily in many countries.

~~~
PaulRobinson
Oh absolutely, and the stuff going on out in China right now will scar
generations in numerous ways.

But in the UK at least, coal mining and even big/heavy industry is mostly
historical now. Coal mines, ship yards, even a lot of the bigger factories and
nearly all the mills are now very quiet. A few still around, but not many.

It's why Fred Dibnah was so popular in his later years: walking, talking
history.

~~~
MrZongle2
As an American, I had to Google Fred Dibnah since I had never heard of him.
The quick-and-dirty:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Dibnah](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Dibnah)

Extra bonus video: here he is at age 50 scaling a chimney...
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R3-YwDZrzg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R3-YwDZrzg)
. Made my palms a bit sweaty just watching it. Amazing that he didn't even use
a harness.

~~~
arethuza
Fred Dibnah was pretty much a steam hacker.

------
michaelkeenan
George Orwell has a great essay about his visits to coal mines:
[http://www.george-orwell.org/Down_The_Mine/0.html](http://www.george-
orwell.org/Down_The_Mine/0.html)

"It is impossible to watch the 'fillers' at work without feeling a pang of
envy for their toughness. It is a dreadful job that they do, an almost
superhuman job by the standard of an ordinary person. For they are not only
shifting monstrous quantities of coal, they are also doing it in a position
that doubles or trebles the work. They have got to remain kneeling all the
while--they could hardly rise from their knees without hitting the ceiling--
and you can easily see by trying it what a tremendous effort this means.
Shovelling is comparatively easy when you are standing up, because you can use
your knee and thigh to drive the shovel along; kneeling down, the whole of the
strain is thrown upon your arm and belly muscles. And the other conditions do
not exactly make things easier. There is the heat--it varies, but in some
mines it is suffocating--and the coal dust that stuffs up your throat and
nostrils and collects along your eyelids, and the unending rattle of the
conveyor belt, which in that confined space is rather like the rattle of a
machine gun. But the fillers look and work as though they were made of iron.
They really do look like iron hammered iron statues--under the smooth coat of
coal dust which clings to them from head to foot. It is only when you see
miners down the mine and naked that you realize what splendid men they are.
Most of them are small (big men are at a disadvantage in that job) but nearly
all of them have the most noble bodies; wide shoulders tapering to slender
supple waists, and small pronounced buttocks and sinewy thighs, with not an
ounce of waste flesh anywhere. In the hotter mines they wear only a pair of
thin drawers, clogs and knee-pads; in the hottest mines of all, only the clogs
and knee-pads. You can hardly tell by the look of them whether they are young
or old. They may be any age up to sixty or even sixty-five, but when they are
black and naked they all look alike. No one could do their work who had not a
young man's body, and a figure fit for a guardsman at that, just a few pounds
of extra flesh on the waist-line, and the constant bending would be
impossible. You can never forget that spectacle once you have seen it--the
line of bowed, kneeling figures, sooty black all over, driving their huge
shovels under the coal with stupendous force and speed."

------
chiph
If you're ever in the Scranton PA area in the summer, visit the Lackawanna
Coal Mine, part of the Anthracite Heritage Museum. Cost is $10. Take a light
jacket as it's cool down there.

Fact I learned on the tour - the wooden supports you see in the old mines
aren't there to support the roof. They're there to provide warning (when they
break) that the roof is coming down.

------
earlz
Although not nearly as horrific as a coal mine, I learned this type of lesson
in a bout of unemployment. I'm a self-taught programmer, and had been laid off
of my job, and with only 1 year of experience and no degree it's super tough
to get anything in a small town.

So, I ended up working at a local factory. The labor itself was hard, hot, and
sweaty(in the summer, the temp was usually around 120F), but you got use to it
after a month or two if you don't have a heat stroke (which is common).. The
most horrifying thing I saw in this though was the utter disregard for human
life.

If you got hurt on the job for any reason, the company would try to find
anyway they could to fire you as soon as possible. One guy had a family to
feed and all, and due to a missing guard ended up grinding a spot on his arm
down to the bone. Although the department head had told him to work as fast as
possible and disregard the missing guard, it was the employees fault for
getting hurt. He came in the next day bandaged up and on painkillers (because
they still didn't let him have a day off) and then fired him at around an hour
before closing.

In another case, a guy in my department that I commonly ate with lost his
finger. I didn't hear the story of what exactly happened, but he was fired,
determined to be his fault. Also, the factory tended to actually be a highly
sought after job. It was well paid (for the area, around $13/hour) and
accepted anyone with a high school diploma. So, if you complained about too
much, you could easily find yourself canned for not meeting impossible quotas
and with a replacement at your station in less than a week.

Also, people drove from all over (Oklahoma) to go to this job. So, when there
was a rare snow storm and most people were trapped in their house, they all
had to take "points" (ie, their only allocated time off) if they couldn't
leave. I think 5 or 6 people wrecked on the way to work.. They kept this crap
up even after being sued for some relatively small amount by an ex-employee
for being fired due to crashing on the way to work when there was an ice storm
(She was fired because she ran out of her allocated time off)

The way the managers and company would treat humans more like robots was
really more painful than the work, and when I quit (because I got a
programming job again) I did not complete my 2 weeks I was suppose to and
ensured that I'd never be able to work there again

~~~
Sharlin
From a Northern European perspective, it is unbelievable such labor conditions
could exist in a (supposedly) first-world country. Preposterous.

~~~
knodi123
There was a simple misunderstanding, someone told the owner that his factory
needed to be "Prosperous", and he heard "Preposterous". Could have happened to
anybody.

------
wumbernang
An anecdote...

My father did the same thing in a mid 80s scenario in the UK.

He took me to work. At the time, he was importing containers full of stuff
from Taiwan for the the new PC clone market i.e. building PCs, assembling them
and reselling them.

I spent an entire day slicing my hands open on cheap PC cases, box cutters,
cardboard boxes and standing on dropped PC case screws and installing MS DOS.

To the child poster, as HN has stopped me replying, yes literally slicing my
hands up - they were cheap pressed metal back then and had edges like razor
blades.

This is why I did electrical engineering and now software :)

(incidentally his volume was 4x Michael Dell's back then but due to sod-all
business sense, he screwed the company up)

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
> slicing my hands open

Not literally, I should hope?

~~~
devopsproject
Some cases have really sharp edges and corners and will easily cut you

------
LordKano
When I was a grade-school child, we were taken on a tour of a coal mine.

It was an operating mine but there was a section that had been updated to
safely give tours.

I was too young to appreciate the kind of effort that went into being a miner
but it was readily apparent to me that I did NOT want that kind of life.

When I was working my way through college, I had a summer job at a machine
shop. We made parts for train cars. Two months of that work made me appreciate
the value of the education that I was getting. Every day when I woke up, my
hands were too cramped to move them. I used to have to wake up 10 minutes
early and place my hands under my back to use the weight of my body to stretch
them out before I began my day. I began to experience numbness in my
fingertips that didn't go away until more than 6 months after I left that
place to go back to college.

All in all, I think it's a good idea to give people a taste of work like this
while they still have choices. It's far better to know, in advance, what
you're in for if you do not acquire some other marketable skill.

~~~
endymi0n
By now I think it's actually more of an asset to have lived through such a
"surprise" than something unfortunate. I remember my mom always telling me
about her work in a sausage factory before she became a teacher and me
thinking something like "hell no, I won't even start like this". Then I messed
up my university studies big time and in a lucky shot - born from the threat
of imminent homelessness - started my career in 24/7 customer service. By hard
work and some luck, I eventually found a back door into engineering at that
company, ending up as CTO only 6 years later. I'll never forget the lessons of
sitting alone through night shifts though for the rest of my life and it's
just such a great way to recall some gratitude and humility whenever I need
it.

------
ed_blackburn
As people in the UK can gather from my surname my family is originally from
the North West. Both sides of my family were coal miners. Both met an early
grave thanks to coal dust. My father worked at the pit above ground.

My grandparents and parents worked very hard to provide me with the
environment to succeed. Success? Stopping another generation from going down
the pit.

Whilst I was at university so many other students had the same background. As
mundane as call centre and supermarket work maybe at least so few are
subjected to those working conditions in the UK now.

~~~
arethuza
There's a fascinating site that maps distributions of surnames in the UK at
various times in history:

[http://gbnames.publicprofiler.org/Surnames.aspx](http://gbnames.publicprofiler.org/Surnames.aspx)

Here's the map for Blackburn in 1881:

[http://gbnames.publicprofiler.org/Map.aspx?name=BLACKBURN&ye...](http://gbnames.publicprofiler.org/Map.aspx?name=BLACKBURN&year=1998&altyear=1881&country=GB&type=name)

~~~
ed_blackburn
Thank you!

------
BJBBB
Gave self a "terrifying lesson". Enlisted in the Marine Corps on an open
contract. From Day #1, was surrounded by profoundly competent, but wholly
crazy, people that seemed to cherish all manner of physical discomfort or
mental terror experienced in the course of a day's 'work'. Damn right that the
VA benefits were subsequently used for school and CS degree.

~~~
Bahamut
Hah, I gave myself that experience after leaving graduate school, but I chose
infantry.

I am about to be admin separated from the reserves, but I will say that the
experience has been an overall huge positive. You learn how to quickly
identify all of the ways leadership is poor in the tech industry, and then get
it all fixed. You also don't lack for motivation since you know what it's like
to be hounded by a DI or NCO :) .

------
nate_meurer
I can't visualize what's happening when they move the jacks and let the roof
collapse. Obviously they don't let it trap them, but I don't understand where
the face, cutter, and jacks are in relation to the tunnel that lets them in
and out. Does anyone here know?

~~~
Turing_Machine
It sounds like they were using this technique:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longwall_mining](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longwall_mining)

~~~
nate_meurer
Thanks! Those hydraulics are unreal.

------
ColinWright
Here's a rough translation of most of it. There may be errors, and I would be
happy for more fluent speakers of proper deep Yorkshire to correct them.

    
    
        "Come on, son. Gerrup! Ah've a surprise for thi!"
    

Come on son, get up! I've a surprise for you!

    
    
        "Ah see Leetning lost three on t' thutty-niners
         t' other week, Poke. Bloody belt'll kill some'dy
         sooin, tha knows."
    

I see Lightning lost three (fingers) on the thirty-niners the other week,
Poke. Bloody (conveyer) belt will kill somebody soon, you know.

Poke was the author's father's nickname.

"Lightning" was his father's best friend's nickname.

"Thutty-nine" was the coalface they were working on.

    
    
        Dad often threw a sickie ...
    

To take a day off as sick leave, despite not being ill.

    
    
        "Stick wi' me, son. Tha'll be reet."
    

Stick with me, son. You'll be right."

    
    
        "Hey up, Poke. Is that thy lad?"
    

Hey up, Poke. Is that your son?

    
    
        "Hey up, Young Pokey. Is tha barn darn t' pit?"
    

Hey up, son of Poke. Is the child down the pit?

    
    
        "Aye, sither. Ah'm barn darn t' thutty-niners
         wi' t' fa'ther."
    

Aye, you see. I'm (the) child down the coalface with the father.

    
    
        "He's a cheyky young bleeder. Tha wants to
         gi'im thick end o' thi belt."
    

He's a cheeky you lad. You want to give him (the) thick end of your belt.

    
    
        "Tha knows Leetning, dun't tha?"
    

You know Lightning, don't you?

    
    
        "Aye, sither, but even then Ah still do bart
         twice as much as thi fa'ther."
    

Aye, you see, but even then I still do about twice as much as your father.

    
    
        "But thy an't had thi surprise yet,"
    

But you haven't had your surprise yet.

    
    
        "Poke's lad darn yet?"
    

(Is) Poke's son down (here) yet?

    
    
        "Reet oh. Ah'll start droppin 'em.
         Watch thi'sens."
    

Right oh. I'll start dropping them. Watch yourselves.

    
    
        "Tha wain't say nowt to thi mam nar,
         will tha? This is just between us men."
    

You won't say anything (lit. nothing) to your mother, will you? This is just
between us men.

    
    
        "But tha knows why he done it, dun't tha?"
    

But you know why he did it, don't you?

    
    
        "Nay, lad,"
    

No, lad.

    
    
        "Thi dad had to grease a few palms to
         get thi darn t' pit that day, tha knows."
    

Your dad had to bribe a few people to get you down the pit that day, you know.

    
    
        "Nar look at thi. Tha passed thi Eleven Plus, ...
    

Now look at you. You passed your 11-plus (a significant school exam),

    
    
        "... tha's bin to college an' tha's got
         a reet good job, an't tha?
    

... you've been to college, and you've got a right good job, haven't you?

    
    
        "Exactly! Sither nar, sunshine?"
    

Exactly! See it now, sunshine?

~~~
gd1
Shouldn't 'bairn' be spelt that way and not 'barn' as in the article?

~~~
ColinWright
Dialectic differences.

    
    
      Yorkshire dialect word     : barn
      Generally accepted meaning : child
                                  (especially a young child, infant) 	
      Old Norse source word      : barn
                                   Same as bairn, which comes from
                                   the Old English bearn.  bairn is
                                   used as an alternative in some
                                   parts of Yorkshire, the other
                                   northern counties and Scotland.
    

From
[http://www.viking.no/e/england/yorkshire_norse.htm](http://www.viking.no/e/england/yorkshire_norse.htm)

------
VLM
"I'd finished college, got my degree and had a highly paid job in social work"

Is that the famous British humor, or do they actually get paid pretty well on
that side of the pond?

The popular theme of denigration of labor and blue collar work in general was
carefully followed to the letter in the story, but, the author hid some social
rebellion in there, describing the feeling of brotherhood and family the
workers feel for each other. I worked some labor type jobs as a school kid
back when that would actually pay your tuition without taking out loans (aka
I'm old) and I also did some time in the reserves and shared adversity leads
to brotherhood. You put up with insanity because 1) you actually can do it and
2) your brothers need you. To this day no one has ever had my back and vice
versa quite like this one grocery store night shift manager or this one
sergeant I was assigned to in the army. Never, in all my white collar
experience since. Given the working conditions I don't think making a life of
it would be wise, but its an experience worth having.

There's a side dish of most people are extremely soft and aspire to be soft,
yet, most people really can also be old school tough.

Also a lesson about anxiety, telling the kid they're going to drop the face
would probably create great anxiety and terror for every second from when he
heard about it until after the drop, assuming the kid had any idea what they
were planning.

It was an enjoyable story and thx for posting.

~~~
marktangotango
Indeed, the brotherhood and sense of camaraderie is what a lot of people miss
today, and may not even realize it. I suppose some people get that thru
participatting in sports, I never did.

>> To this day no one has ever had my back and vice versa quite like this one
grocery store night shift manager or this one sergeant I was assigned to in
the army.

Conversely, no one has ever deliberately and methodically screwed me over the
way my old sergeant did. That guy was diabolical. Crazy, mean, stupid, pick
two, if you're lucky. If you're not then you get all three.

~~~
omegaham
Can confirm, had a nutball bipolar sergeant. On his bad days, he wanted to
fight me and then try to bust me down for "disrespect of a superior non-
commissioned officer." On his good days, he would whine about how no one
respected him or liked him.

I got meritoriously promoted solely to get away from him. The master sergeant
congratulated him for "mentoring" me to be such a good Marine. Motherfucker.

Thankfully, he's now EAS'd and in Alaska with the bears, where he belongs.

------
Treyno
Anybody who is interested in this dialect or 'Yorkshire Life' should give Kes
a watch
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064541/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064541/)

~~~
PaulRobinson
God no, do not put anybody through that.

We had to study the book and watch the movie for GCSE English.

The writing is florid nonsense. The movie is worse: only one professional
actor used throughout (the school teacher), and it shows.

Oh, and spoiler alert: the story is you can't have nice things, because even
once you've found something nice you enjoy your brother is a dick and will
kill it and put it in the bin.

Horrible, horrible, horrible book and film. Awful.

~~~
johntaitorg
Here's Kes again

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBJi5tA-L1o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBJi5tA-L1o)

------
gregsq
Conditions in Victorian coal mines shocked victorian England, particularly
when it was discovered that topless young girls co worked with naked men.

My family in medieval times were squires. My grandparents in Yorkshire worked
in these conditions. What I've inherited from it is a very strong back.

It's a fascinating time, and a commission was formed by queen victoria to look
into it.

This may interest some.

[http://www.victorianweb.org/history/ashley.html](http://www.victorianweb.org/history/ashley.html)

------
DanBC
This article has a nice photograph of supports being installed.

Those supports are active - they move forward as the coal is being cut. They
have something called a "Chock Control Interface" (it's the smallish box, at
knee hight, on the hydrolic arm, with the big thick cables attached.)

I used to build and test those boxes. I was part of a sub-contract firm, the
client was Dowty Mining, then Longwall, then Joy Mining. They were fun to
build - you used a variety of different engineering.

Seeing that photo gave me a bit of a flashback.

EDIT: This article mentions a radio programme, but does not link to it. The
BBC iPlayer makes it hard to find the programme the article talks about.

Here are some about coal mining (including "The Light", the programme talked
about):
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/collections/p02t6qzd](http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/collections/p02t6qzd)

(One of those mentions the Forest of Dean, which is where one of the Stack
Exchange devs is from.)

and here's a direct link to The Light:
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05y4f96](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05y4f96)

And here's another programme from that author about growing up poor:
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01nzqvr](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01nzqvr)

------
10098
I'm relieved to say that whole drunk father story turned out better than I
expected.

------
mjklin
... And that's why you always leave a note!

------
learnstats2
On British regional accents:

I saw a BBC drama from the 1970s where a man with a West Country accent would
say (it was subtitled as) e.g. "He'm a farmer", replacing "He is a farmer",
consistently throughout.

I have never come across that grammar before and can't find any source for it.
All of his other grammatical constructions were comfortably familiar, and no
other character (not even neighbours in the same village) spoke in that way.

I wondered, were we supposed to understand something particular from that?
Would we have, in the 1970s?

~~~
dtf
Some people say "I is", so I guess it's conceivable that others say "he am".
And I think they say "we am" / "we'm" in Norfolk.

* here's a book on Cotswold Dialect, mentioning we'm and you'm. [https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=SNS8AgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA11&ot...](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=SNS8AgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA11&ots=hRQjlmge6a&dq=%22we'm%22%20dialect&pg=PA11#v=onepage&q=he'm&f=false)

~~~
learnstats2
> here's a book on Cotswold Dialect, mentioning we'm and you'm.
> [https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=SNS8AgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA11&ot...](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=SNS8AgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA11&ot..).

That's a wonderful reference! Thanks so much!

------
golemotron
As a kid I heard the song 'We Work The Black Seam Together' by Sting. It was
protesting the closure of mines in England. Even as a kid I couldn't imagine
what was going through his head. Yes many minors were put out of work and I'm
sure many of them and their families were put into horrible poverty or worse
but breaking the generational cycle had to have been a positive thing.

------
BuildTheRobots
People in the UK can listen to this on BBC (radio) iPlayer as it was on Radio4
this morning:
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05y4f96](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05y4f96)

------
spacemanmatt
Having just read the article, I'm now so much more thankful that watching my
parents' relative struggle was informative enough for me to pursue education
and a good career, that they never had to "scare" me out of anything.

------
sjclemmy
Luxury.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo)

~~~
microtherion
Maybe even more topical:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPSzPGrazPo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPSzPGrazPo)

------
na85
I still have no idea what the surprise was. That was really poorly written.
The roof caved in? They did it on purpose and then something exploded?

------
ColinWright
Does anyone need a translation of any of that? I don't speak broad Yorkshire,
but I can probably help out with the more difficult bits.

I never was given a lesson like this, but I learned the same lesson by working
one summer in a factory that made gas barbecues. I saw the hard physical work,
the utter tedium, and it was without doubt the best motivation to get a good
degree and work I enjoyed.

This was a great read. Thank you.

~~~
yitchelle
@ColinWright, can you help out with following text from the article? Just
don't want to miss out on the inner meaning of the message from father to son.
Many thanks!

> "I'm sorry. Tha wain't say nowt to thi mam nar, will tha? This is just
> between us men."

~~~
pjc50
Tha = thee, the familiar form of "you". "Only thee-thou's them as thee-thou's
you": family and close friends only. This is dying out. I recall my Yorkshire
grandmother using it, but only intermittently.

wain't = won't nar = now

These are both on the other side of a vowel shift.

Nowt = nothing. This is a bit of dialect that's still alive, partly due to its
use in the TV advertising slogan "Bread wi' Nowt Taken Out".

TV and the class system have long worked against UK regional accents and
dialect.

~~~
rahoulb
I live in Leeds now, but grew up in Nottingham (70 miles south, also coal-
mining country) and we said "owt" and "nowt" \- but pronounced like "oat", not
"out".

Also your stereotypical Yorkshire would shorten "the" to "t'" (going down
t'pit) - we would drop it completely "guin' dahn pit".

Sometimes I reckon Yorkshire folks think I'm taking the piss the way I say
things.

~~~
tragomaskhalos
I was at Uni with a bloke from Burnley, and he used to say "obbat" and
"nobbat" (for "owt" and "nowt" respectively), although I've never heard them
since.

------
nl
Make sure you read to the end. TL;DR doesn't really work.

~~~
hias
TL;DR: Kid thinks Dad is crazy. Crazy dad takes kid to hell of an workplace.
Kid hates dad for that. Kid discovers dad did it so that kid won't ever have
or want to work in a place like that. Kid love dad again.

;-)

~~~
zyx321
Thank you. I really despise this sort of blatant clickbait headlines.

~~~
smitherfield
It could have been more descriptive, but I'd say it's pretty low on the scale
of headline obnoxiousness. And the story is well-written, detailed and
touching, I thought.

~~~
yitchelle
click baiting from the BBC is quite rare so it is not so bad.

