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Moi? Never!

There are a few common spam words in the filters you may have hit but I can't see anything in your post that would have caught it. I'll check on it though, thanks.

Don't know why but it was waiting for approval, maybe it's like facebook and you've been put in the nick @Canny lass!😉

Thank you! I would never have guessed fungus! I'm very pleased to know that they are beneficial rather than dangerous as I was having visions of having to replace all the soil in the spring.

Thanks Eggy & VIc. I use these sites also ut they have one big prolem for me: It often requires a considerable degree of mining knowledge in order to understand the content. Take the second definition of "haulage boy" given by Eggy. In the first sentence you have "jotties", "panel gates" and "ganging" - all meaningless to me , so that definition is wasted on me. It's much better to ask here on Bedders where we have people with a great deal of mining experience and who are able to answer in simple everyday language that can be understood by the likes of me. There's the added bonus that if I don't understand then I can ask for clarification. It's not a bad idea to have these things explained in 'clear speak' somewhere on the Internet. There must be more than me who have believed that everybody underground is simply a 'miner' when, in truth, there are a myriad of occupations with varying specialist competence below ground. It's a whole new world for me.

Could it be Mycorrhizae Fung - check this site out @Canny lass :- https://www.gardenmyths.com/fungi-wood-chips/

Can't find 'Rope boy' - just 'Rope mam' = A man employed to maintain and extend, splice or install haulage ropes. Other than HPW - Geoff Glass & Alan Dickson (Barnton Facebook group) two of the web sites I have used for pit terms are :- https://www.healeyhero.co.uk/rescue/glossary/glossary.htm & http://www.dmm.org.uk/books/terms_a.htm Nothing about Rope man or boy in the dmm list. NB. the healeyhero site http://www.healeyhero.co.uk/rescue/glossary/glossary.htm t says :- his site is Glossary of words that are generally specific to the mining industry: Some have a two or three fold meaning, some have gone out of use, some are local to Derbyshire, Leicestershire, South Yorkshire and to Nottinghamshire, and others are general to the British Coalfields. As there wasn't a reference to Rope boy I looked at Haulage (from the Rope man definition) and it has this :- Haulage Boy, (1) aged 13 to 18 usually employed lashing or clipping and un-clipping tubs on an engine driven (moving) haulage rope on main roads or pit bottom area. Haulage boy (2) could also be one say 15 years plus employed getting tubs or jotties of supplies to a face and empties back in panel gates by engine driven haulage rope, or ganging same by a pony. The age of starting work was 13 from 1880s up to 1913, then 14 from 1930s to 1948, 15 up to 1960s, thereafter 16 plus. Haulage boy (3) generally a young boy 13 to 15 assisting an experienced person doing the above jobs (description sometimes varied pit by pit).