I left school at sixteen with five 'O' levels in my pocket. I went to work down the pit with my Dad. I stayed there for three years working with men who fix water pumps. The pumps were needed to suck water out of the mine. The water was from the North Sea and the pit was six miles out and one mile deep. Hot showers and black snot greeted us the end of every day. The canteen sold great chips and mushy peas. One of the canteen night-shift ladies would (allegedly) suck you off for a packet of ciggies. The guys who scrubbed the black snot from the shower walls were camp and obviously gay. No one batted an eye when they minced about with towels and soap during the shower rush-hour. One Burt Reynolds looky-likey on my shift was fond of teasing them by walking to their towel room naked and dripping and asking for a fresh towel and a bit of help drying himself. He'd have run a mile if they'd said ok. For three years I went underground five days a week for eight hours. When they closed that mine in 1990 the pit ponies were released into a green field on a neighbouring farm. Some of them had been down the pit for twenty years without ever seeing daylight (they lived in stables underground). Within six months they were all dead. Some say they died from an excess of happiness following an utterly grim life.