The thing is Boy,
Yes, YES! I did need a shower this morning, and ****** lovely it was.
Aye cracking........
Let me tell you three things I got just right with my shower this morning.
First of it was HOT.
Not warm, definitely not lukers, as you said when you where a lad, but ****** lovely and hot.
Like the shower after a shift in The Pit.
Now, notice the capitals there, on The Pit.
Not to make it a loud word, I am simply showing due respect to The Pit.
I spent enough years down that colliery to show it that due respect.
The Pit indeed.

Secondly, there was enough water.
In my shower, not the mine now, pay attention!
It can be hard for folk to hang on to my words, I digress so much, hanging on to my words is like trying to grab a slimy mackerel on a sunny day at Porthcawl Pier.
Now that is a ditry pier, due to littering.
And fishing.
Speaking as a fisherman, with you will notice, a  SMALL f, as I do not profess a great degree of skill in that area, but speaking as a fisherman, I will admit that there is an occasional tendency towards the dropping of litter.
On the pier, that is.
Quite likely elsewhere as well, but then I only fish the pier, see.

Anyway, yes, water.
Enough of it.
Not a ****** half-hearted trickle, an apologetic drip, but a deluge!
Fair flooded me out, it did.
****** marvellous.
Smashing.

Now, there was a third good thing.....
Ahh. THAT was it..
Someone to scrub my back.
Very important indeed.
You see, in The Pit, or at least, in the colliery shower, after a shift, we had good showers.
Hot, they were. Hot and wet, and we would stand there, warming ourselves under the water.
By Christ, my arms were sore after a day on my side with a pick.
And the soap was hard too, like a ruddy brick.
But the water helped see, took the pain away, it did.
Aye, and all the Boys, we would wash each others backs.
That was the way then.
In the showers.
Aye.
I new my mate's backs better than my missus'
Thirty years scrubbing them.
"Whiter than white" I would say.
When they asked me.
"How is my back Bryn?"
"Whiter than white".
Aye
Good days.

Now this shower.
A ****** good one too, It was today.
The Girl who comes in got it just right.
Halfway between five and five and a quarter.
Bang on.
And she washed my back.
Not as hard as the boys would have done,
but good enough for a youngster.
Not bad at all.

All in all, a good shower.
And that means a good day.
I can wheel my chair to look out the front later.

You'll pardon me for going now,
but I have to go to the bathroom see.
A big ****** task for me now.
Still, no-one in till teatime, and I can manage,
if I take it slow.

And thursday I get another shower.
And I will tell you about the days in The Pit again.

He lived in a fine old country house
Befitting a man of means,
With everything a Victorian Squire
Could aspire to, in his dreams.
He owned four-fifths of a colliery
In the days when coal was gold,
And topped that up with a Brewery,
But the mean old man was cold.

For Benjamin John Fortescue ruled
His house like a would-be Earl,
His son had never felt welcome there
Since he’d married a country girl,
The mother had gone some years before
Who protected, in his youth,
But now, the **** of his father’s whims
The lad found out the truth.

He treated them like the servant class
Expected to fetch and bring,
But paid a pittance to keep them there,
His purse on a miser’s string,
‘I keep a fine roof over your heads
And you eat each day for free,’
He’d say, whenever they asked for gilt,
‘What more do you want from me?’

Their toddler Tim wore cast-off clothes
And was made to play outside,
‘I don’t want a ragamuffin’s mess,’
He’d say, till the mother cried.
‘You don’t seem to love your grandson,’ said
His son, his head in a whirl,
‘I would if he had some parentage,
But not from some country girl.’

As time went on there was something wrong
For the father suffered fits,
At first it would start with a seizure,
He would seem to lose his wits.
He’d lie for days in a sort of haze
And would scarcely draw a breath,
And Caroline would look hard it him,
‘It’s as if he’s caught in death!’

It happened enough to make him plan
Should the doctor be deceived,
‘I don’t want the fools to bury me
Alive, so I’m not retrieved.’
He bought a coffin with space inside
And a tube, out to the air,
With a little bell he could ring as well
If he found himself in there.

‘Be sure to follow instructions if
You think that I am dead,
Affix the bell to the tube as well
With a cord down to my head,
Then check the grave for a week or more
To see if the bell should ring,
Then hurry to dig me up, and I
Will give you anything.’

The day came that on the seventh fit
They could swear that he was dead,
‘There isn’t even a breath of air
And his eyes are up in his head.’
Three doctors came, and they all concurred
That his life was now extinct,
‘It had to happen,’ the couple heard,
‘He’s been living on the brink.’

They laid him out in his coffin, and
They fitted the tube to breathe,
Attached the bell, and the cord as well
Before they rose to leave,
But Timothy stayed to play that day
As he did, down in the Dell,
And a week went by till his mother cried:
‘Where did he get that bell?’

David Lewis Paget

Afore colliery doth the world be so suggestive of sublimity,
Upon me lay no residence that I may well take leave,
Barring, encompassed beneath the celestial witching hour,
Amassed unruffled, myself and thee.

A moment at time doth chattels be made the scene unmarred,
And thy look as if existed hence silver-tongued,
A haste of blustery weather hail from over me,
As I winched up from my pier and meandered absent.

Unknown to me could some unique facet be more veracious,
Nowhere be present at hand, a berth I be further elicit to,
O' be at disposal with me that we may saunter self-possessed, my unrivaled ecstasy,
Amassed unruffled, myself and thee.

Squished between bottled memories are photo's depth
Fossils hold lastingness, enigmatic time
Explorer on coal fact-finding mission, yours and mine
Blackness of glassy lumps, tremendous breadth
At the old colliery, buried history, a coal town's death

Unbounded, far-reaching reminiscence of miner's lives
Great, great grandfathers incinerated citizenry
Existence not wasted, though no nostalgia cynically
Selling souls to company store per week for fives
Faith they measured by feeding children and wives

No way out from tombs of chiseled insignificance
Pick axes, shovels sounding klinks and klanks
Started his career at thirteen, some less in ranks
What  grandpa heard: cussing, dynamite dissonance
Sounds of ancestors buried in condition indigence