Red Blood for Black Gold

Available to Pre-Order ~ Launch date 21st February 2025

Coal mining: a dirty, risky, and dangerous spine cracking occupation where a collier who descended into this subterranean Hell Hole never knew if he would once more see the light of day, or even his family ever again. Explosion, flood, gas, fire, rock-fall, if ever a man put his life on the line in search of a weekly wage packet, this was the one. He may not have spoken of it, but it was there, always in his mind, every chance of death sneaking out from those ink black recesses of the pit. As the proud son of a coal miner these thoughts never occurred to me when I was a boy, work down the pit was what most men did in my village, loss of limb or life was an occupational hazard. Death underground was never spoken of, yet it was too often a common occurrence. Maybe this is what bound mining communities together; it plucked young lads from their school desks and turned them into men almost overnight. Yet there was fun and laughter, pleasure and camararderie in many forms in these tightly knit coal mining parishes. They looked after each other up on t ‘op, and minded each others backs when underground. Buckets of Red Blood have been spilled in the search for Black Gold down the generations and within the boundaries of South Normanton Derbyshire. Coal fuelled much employment, rising to prominence many times down the years then all to soon it was burnt out, gone. This is my story.