Tales From The Allotments

By William Forde

‘Tales from the Allotments’ is my favourite story that I have ever written from the 50+ books I’ve had published. It is suitable reading for any teenager and adult. Although set in the 19th and early 20th centuries, it is a timeless story that is just as relevant today as it was 150 years ago.

It tells the story of a mining village where the local pit is the sole employer. The pit is closed down and the miners are made redundant. Many of the villagers move in search of new homes and jobs, but the families of 18 miners who own an allotment refuse to leave their homes and village.

After months and years of unemployment, increased poverty and the onset of hopelessness, all 18 ex-miners begin to work their allotment plot which become their saviour and provides them with a new purpose in life as well as fresh produce for their family tables.

My dearly deceased father, Paddy Forde was an ex-miner in West Yorkshire and I rededicate this story to his memory.

This country owes a considerable debt to the coal miners. For generations they helped to put us at the forefront of the world’s industrial stage. The coal they mined heated our homes, lit up our lives and fuelled the industrial furnaces of our manufacturing base.

For over one hundred years, the coal miners of England, Scotland and Wales risked health, life and limbs to bring us the produce of their labour. In conditions of dirt and danger, they did their daily work with unstinting effort.
The massive programme of pit closure since the 1980’s heralded the decline of mining communities and the prominence of the coal miner as an occupation of the future.

The legacy, which the coal miners left us, is not the wealth which they helped to create from the sweat of their labour, but the manner in which they conducted their lives then and ever since.

From the depths of economic depression, they showed us dignity. In periods of want they displayed compassion and generosity. They revealed to us the enduring qualities of fraternity, community spirit and neighbourly values. This is the historical legacy which they have bequeathed to the nation and I am proud that my father was a coal miner in his time. This book has been written in their memory and the memory of my deceased father, Paddy Forde.

William Forde.

• Language: English
• Publisher: William Forde
• Release date: Dec 11, 2013
• ISBN: 9781311695895

William Forde

William Forde was born in Ireland and currently lives in Haworth, West Yorkshire with his wife Sheila. He is the father of five children and the author of over 60 published books and two musical plays. Approximately 20 of his books are suitable for the 7-11 year old readers while the remainder are suitable for young persons and adults. Since 2010, all of his new stories have been written for adults under his 'Tales from Portlaw' series of short stories. His website is www.fordefables.co.uk on which all his miscellaneous writings may be freely read. There are also a number of children's audio stories which can be freely heard.He is unique in the field of contemporary children's authors through the challenging emotional issues and story themes he addresses, preferring to focus upon those emotions that children and adults find most difficult to appropriately express.One of West Yorkshire's most popular children's authors, Between 1990 and 2002 his books were publicly read in over 2,000 Yorkshire school assemblies by over 800 famous names and celebrities from the realms of Royalty, Film, Stage, Screen, Politics, Church, Sport, etc. The late Princess Diana used to read his earlier books to her then young children, William and Harry and Nelson Mandela once telephoned him to praise an African story book he had written. Others who have supported his works have included three Princesses, three Prime Ministers, two Presidents and numerous Bishops of the realm. A former Chief Inspector of Schools for OFSTED described his writing to the press as 'High quality literature.' He has also written books which are suitable for adults along with a number of crossover books that are suitable for teenagers and adults.Forever at the forefront of change, at the age of 18 years, William became the youngest Youth Leader and Trade Union Shop Steward in Great Britain. In 1971, He founded Anger Management in Great Britain and freely gave his courses to the world. Within the next two years, Anger Management courses had mushroomed across the English-speaking world. During the mid-70's, he introduced Relaxation Training into H.M. Prisons and between 1970 and 1995, he worked in West Yorkshire as a Probation Officer specialising in Relaxation Training, Anger Management, Stress Management and Assertive Training Group Work.He retired early on the grounds of ill health in 1995 to further his writing career, which witnessed him working with the Minister of Youth and Culture in Jamaica to establish a trans-Atlantic pen-pal project between 32 primary schools in Falmouth, Jamaica and 32 primary schools in Yorkshire.William was awarded the MBE in the New Year's Honours List of 1995 for his services to West Yorkshire. He has never sought to materially profit from the publication of his books and writings and has allowed all profit from their sales (approx £200,000) to be given to charity. Since 2013, he was diagnosed with CLL; a terminal condition for which he is currently receiving treatment.In 2014, William had his very first 'strictly for adult' reader's novel puiblished called‘Rebecca’s Revenge'. This book was first written over twenty years ago and spans the period between the 1950s and the New Millennium. He initially refrained from having it published because of his ‘children’s author credentials and charity work’. He felt that it would have conflicted too adversely with the image which had taken a decade or more to establish with his audience and young person readership. Now, however as he approaches the final years of his life and cares less about his public image, besides no longer writing for children (only short stories for adults since 2010), he feels the time to be appropriate to publish this ‘strictly for adults only’ novel alongside the remainder of his work.In December 2016 he was diagnosed with skin cancer on his face and two weeks later he was diagnosed with High-grade Lymphoma (Richter’s Transformation from CLL). He was successfully treated during the first half of 2017 and is presently enjoying good health albeit with no effective immune system.

Book preview

‘Tales from the Allotments’

by William Forde

Published by William Forde

Cover Illustration by Robert Nixon

Smashwords Edition

Published by William Forde at Smashwords

Copyright 2013 William Forde

Revised and republished December, 2016.

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an addition copy for each recipient. If you’re not reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

‘Tales from the Allotments’

by William Forde

(Dedicated to my deceased father, Paddy Forde)

Contents

Author’s Foreword

Chapter One – ‘Pappa’s Star’

Chapter Two – ‘The Allotment Hall’

Chapter Three – ‘Cradle to Grave’

Chapter Four – ‘The Bridge’

Chapter Five – ‘Old King Coal’

Chapter Six – ‘Telling Stories’

Chapter Seven – ‘The Allotment Holders’

Chapter Eight – ‘The Contest’

Chapter Nine – ‘Pappa’s Star – Blackie’s Star?’

Author’s Background

Other Books by this Author

For the General Audience

Romantic Drama Strictly for Adults

Connect with William Forde

Author’s Foreword

This country owes a considerable debt to the coal miners. For generations, they helped to put us at the forefront of the world’s industrial stage. The coal they mined heated our homes, lit up our lives and fuelled the industrial furnaces of our manufacturing base.

For over one hundred years, the coal miners of England, Scotland and Wales risked life and limbs to bring us the produce of their labour. In conditions of dirt and danger, they did their daily work with unstinting effort and cheerful heart.

The massive programme of pit closure since the 1980’s heralded the decline of mining communities and the prominence of the coal miner as an occupation of the future.

The legacy, which the coal miners left us, is not the wealth which they helped to create from the sweat of their labour, but the way they conducted their lives then and ever since.

From the depths of economic depression, they showed us dignity. In periods of want, they displayed compassion and generosity. They revealed to us the enduring qualities of fraternity, community spirit and neighbourly values. This is the historical legacy, which they have bequeathed to the nation, and I am proud that my father was a coal miner in his time. This book has been written in their memory and is dedicated to my deceased father, Paddy Forde.

‘Tales from the Allotments’ is one of eight children’s story books, which I wrote in celebration of the New Millennium. All eight books were simultaneously published on January 1st, 2000 and each book was dedicated to a specific primary school in Yorkshire. All money from their sales went to charitable causes elected by the schools. All profit from the sale of this book publication will also be given to charity in perpetuity.

I extend my heartfelt appreciation to the artist, Robert Nixon from Denby Dale, for providing the wonderful cover illustration in keeping with the text. The original publication of this book was first read from by the television presenter Michael Parkinson at Shafton Primary School, Shafton, Barnsley, South Yorkshire on the day of its publication launch.

William Forde, December, 2016.

Chapter One - ‘Pappa’s Star’

It was Christmas Eve, that magical time of the year when hope for a better tomorrow can be found in the promise of a new-born star; that time during December when the smallest amount of generosity possesses the power to enter and soften the hardest of hearts.

Snow began to fall from the starlit sky over the Yorkshire village of Marfield Dell, transforming the harsh, rugged landscape of the mining village below into a picture postcard of seasonal delight. The soft, white snowflakes fell to the ground like small pieces of compassionate Christmas sky, bringing with it a message of goodwill that reminded the occupants of one house and the next that the time had come to strengthen fragile relationships and to heal any old wounds that still festered.

Inside the village houses, poor parents placed their gifts of love beneath the Christmas tree while their children were wrapped up snugly in bed, too hungry to relax and far too excited to sleep.

The clock in the village square struck eleven. As it did so, eighteen men from humble cottage dwellings prepared to leave their wives and children for the night. One by one, each man gathered up a bundle of identical belongings: a miner’s lamp, an identity tag, a flagon of ale, a drinking mug and one silver florin. After putting on warm clothing they kissed their wives and left their homes; making their way up towards the Village Square where they had agreed to meet up at 11.00 pm.

As they marched towards the Village Square, a thick blanket of snow began to settle beneath their stride. The snow covered the set stones of the cobbled street, leaving the impression of a white patchwork quilt to pave their way.

These eighteen men were among the most respected in their community and even the ridges of the old rooftop cottages paid homage to their passing. Cloaked in a heavy, seasonal robe of ermine sky, the rooftop ridges bowed and curtsied with the reverence of graceful age as the band of men walked by.

Once assembled in the Village Square, festive greetings were silently exchanged by the nod of the head and a friendly handshake. There would be much talking between them before the night’s work was done and now wasn’t the time to waste the warmth of their words to the chill of the cold night air, especially when silent gestures would suffice.

~~~~~

All eighteen men who assembled in the Village Square had much in common. They have all been born and bred in Marfield Dell. They were all neighbours, occupying identical rented houses in the same street of the village. They were all ex-miners; they were all allotment holders and they were all comrades and lifelong friends.

They and their families represented the heart of Marfield Dell, a proud pit village for more than a hundred years. At the height of its prosperity, almost two hundred mining families had lived in the village. The local colliery had been its largest employer, providing constant work for any man, woman and child who wanted it.

As the years progressed, Parliament passed laws making it illegal for the youngest of children to work down the pit, and in time, even pit ponies would be replaced with both manual and mechanical means of hauling tubs of coal from the seam work-face to the pithead.

In the early days, the country wanted coal. They needed as much coal as could be mined to feed the hungry furnaces of textile mills, steelworks, and shipyards. Coal and its by-products were used to power steam trains, ocean liners and all manner of factory machine. Last, but not least, coal was the fuel that provided the warmth for every home in the land.

Coal became the black gold of the earth and the work of our miners was in great demand. Governments and politicians led the miners to believe that there was sufficient need of their coal to keep them and their sons yet to be born, in work for a lifetime.

Working down the pit was hard. The hours were long and the conditions were dirty, dangerous, and often deadly. Many miners died with their clogs on and few ever reached the age of fifty with undamaged lungs.

And yet, despite such hardship, the miners loved their jobs and way of life. They cherished the close companionship they shared with their workmates, developing between them bonds of brotherhood and friendship that no foe or master could ever unravel.

To these proud men, being a miner meant much more than having a job and earning wages. Being a miner and belonging to a mining community was a way of life steeped in proud tradition. They worked together, lived side-by-side as neighbours and socialised as friends. When one of them married, or become a father, all of them celebrated the occasion. When one of them died, each man suffered and grieved their loss.

Then, a new government came to power and the miners across the land lost the favour of friendly politicians. Overnight, their lives were thrown into turmoil and their world changed beyond all recognition.

Without a whiff of warning, the pit in Marfield Dell was closed, leaving almost every man in the village without a job. It was a severe shock, the kind of shock that only the sudden death of a loved one brings.

Unemployment was a new experience for these hard-working men and it was many months before most of them began to realise that their mining days were over and that their pit would no longer be required to give up its coal from the earth.

There were no other jobs to turn to and no other jobs to be found. Having been deprived of the means of earning their livelihood, their families went hungry, bills remain unpaid, debt rapidly increased and many found themselves evicted from their rented homes and tied cottages.

Closure of the pit had robbed the village of its reason for existence and stripped it of its proud identity within the Shire. The village was left in desolation; resembling no more than a mere skeleton of its former self.

Had a massive underground explosion occurred making the pit collapse and killing half of its workforce, the miners might have understood and accepted the inevitability of its closure. Had its seam of coal run dry, they would have accepted the prospect of redundancy and unemployment more easily.

But there had been no pit collapse and the richness of the coal seam still to be mined was sufficient to last another lifetime. Economics decreed that the mine was more profitable to abandon. The miners just couldn’t understand why it had happened. Many miners blamed the government and in a display of proud defiance, they marched to London in angry protest. Some miners blamed the greed of the coal-mining masters, but wherever the blame lay, it was the hard-working miners and their families who were left to pay the heaviest cost of the pit closure!

Three months after their pit closed, over one hundred families had left the village of their birth, hoping to find work and new homes in another part of the country.

For those redundant miners who remained in Marfield Dell, they tried to make the best of their lot. They knew that life on the dole would not be easy as they moved from a life of proud independence to their growing dependency on family, friends and neighbours for daily survival. Forever hungry, many ex-miners initially remained positive in outlook as they moved from one day to the next in the hope of a better tomorrow.

~~~~~

As the men began to assemble in the Village Square, Tally Myers started to take