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Haway Canny Lass, it's on the poster at the top of this thread,............ must try harder

A should mention that this pic was taken when we were driving the main roadway into a virgin seam that no pit in the country had ever worked,and was waiting to be opened up at the other side of a 36-foot thick Blue Whinstone Dyke,which we would have been driving through within a few days of this pic been taken. This roadway was 14-feet wide x 10 feet high arched 3-piece girders. 50-odd holes were drilled across the whole of the place ,using a Holman Compressed-air,[windy] driller and a 9 foot long straight [not helix]drillrod,with a "Star" bit on the end of the rod. Sheer brute force of impact,and rotation,drilled the holes,with a deafening noise from the driller,all shift long,for sometimes 12 hours at a time.[with water/oil being thrown all over you constantly] It took 50-60 lbs of "Polar-Ajax" explosives,[33% Nitro-Glycerine],to blast this roadway out,to give a 9' "Pull" [advance],in the roadway. Noo,when ye saw this one after firing,ye had a virtual mountain of shot-down stones to ridd onto a conveyor belt,so in this case we had a small mechanical shovel to shift most of it,but still had to handfill the rest,in order to get the girders in,and prepare the place for bringing the cutter in to cut,and drill again.

Thanks Eggy! Noo,THAT was pitwark..the most depressing place on earth when you get inbye,aboot 1-0am,after riding [cage down] at 12-0midneet,and tek ye claas off,have a five minute snack oot ya bait,while looking inbye at this place from aboot 20yards oot,and keeping one hand owa ya flask cup,ti stop droppers of seawatter from getting amangst it.[just the eerie soond of the droppers splashing in the ground water,in the deathly dark and quietness,was depressing on it's own!] The waata was taken ti the Labs to be analysed,as it was corroding everything in sight in days,which took six months at other pits,and was found to be 6 times saltier than seawaata,and three times more corrosive,and that is a fact!! Electricians and fitters,as well as us mere miners,had ti work every weekend all the way through,running every machine and conveyor belt in the three-quarter seam,to prevent seize-ups on the first Monday shift start.[apart from repairing aal the damage on the face as weel!] A wished a had had the foresight ti tek me camera doon onto the faces what a described above,it would have been better than trying ti describe it,but it was bad enough working in a hell-hole,withoot thinking of tekking photos of it! At thi time,we were just pleased ti gaan yem and get some sleep and forget aboot it,till thi next neet! Just before the pit closed, a was taaking ti aan aad-timer,like me noo,[but 30-odd years ago remember?!],and he said,"Aye,the miners have got it easy nooadays,the machines dae aal thi wark noo!".... Like a red rag ti a bull! A telt him [speaking only for mesell' and me Marras doon thi 3/4 drift],that WE had it WORSE than some of the aad-timers who worked in dry conditions,wi a coalcutter wi a 4'-6" or a 6'-0" jib on,and hand-filling wi a big pan shuul!,back in thi aad days! The usual way ti win a face oot was ti arc oot wi a 6 foot jib,giving 14 feet wide workings,then take a side cut along the newly - won-oot face,with the same size jib on the cutter,ti give 18 feet wide coalface x the length,usually 200 yards long. Wor Undermanager wanted ti save time and money wi aal this double- cutting,so he sent a coalcutter in with a NINE foot long jib,[which is clearly seen on me photo's],which gave a TWENTY-FEET wide arc, so after we cut the place,we had ti drill and blast 2 feet each side of the arc,straight off the solid,ti give a 24-feet wide coalface,ready to install the face installation. The sheer physical effort of cutting,hand-drilling,and hand-filling,an arc off,onto a conveyor belt which was sometimes 20 feet away from you,as you advanced the workings,and you had to "fling" each shovel-ful in one go,onto the belt,and not "double-cast" the coal,was immensly draining to body and soul. It wasn't just coal we had to fill,there was about a foot of "Rammel",[broken-up crushed loose roof-stone],which used to come away with the coal,and which weighed a ton,even small pieces,as it was waterlogged. That's the darker grey part of the strata you can see in my pic above,which was very undulating,and could be six inches in one cut,then two feet thick in the next cut,but averaged aboot a foot overall. The seam shown here is about 4-feet high,but more than a foot is under water! Eh,lad,not a very pleasant place ti spend an evening!

... must get new specs as well!

The Test The phone rings and the lady of the house answers, "Hello." "Mrs. Sanders, please." "Speaking." "Mrs. Sanders, this is Doctor Jones at Saint Agnes Laboratory. When your husband's doctor sent his biopsy to the lab last week, a biopsy from another Mr. Sanders arrived as well... We are now uncertain which one belongs to your husband. Frankly, either way the results are not too good." "What do you mean?" Mrs. Sanders asks nervously. "Well, one of the specimens tested positive for Alzheimer's and the other one tested positive for HIV. We can't tell which is which." "That's dreadful! Can you do the test again?" questioned Mrs. Sanders. "Normally we can, but MEDICARE will only pay for these expensive tests once." "Well, what am I supposed to do now?" "The MEDICARE Helpdesk recommend that you drop your husband off somewhere in the middle of town”. “If he finds his way home, don't sleep with him!”