The Old Collier

Uncle Ted

Uncle Ted smelled of cigarette smoke, not the acrid stale smell of the unwashed, but  fresh, healthy, live-before-you-die cigarette smoke, probably conjured by advertising observed as a small child in the 1950s.

His collier’s house glowed from his miner’s coal allowance.   The smell of mouth-watering cooking lingered as Aunty Ade struggled to feed the mountains of mouths;  children, grandchildren, visitors and their children, neighbour’s children...

Cats rubbed your legs as you entered, while dogs were held back from causing you death by licking.  Cages bulging with gerbils, hamsters, and mice were stacked on tanks of goldfish.   More cats scratched the window to come in after catching slow worms in the garden.

Uncle Ted’s passion was male voice choirs.   His high tech, battered old radiogramme dominated one side of the room.   After moving small stools, piles of washing and possibly a cat, a record would be dug out from his prized, well-used collection.   As it was unwrapped, he’d explain  almost second by second, the highlights, and  joys of “Treorchy Male Voice, at Aberamman.”    After lovingly wiping its grooves with his chamois, he'd eventually place it on the turntable and wait.

The sound echoed through the row of houses.   But no banging on walls or front doors, no protest more than a smile and “Ted’s playing his records again.”

Aunty Ade had a habit of sitting outside on the wall on summer evenings.  “The only place to listen to it.   He has it too loud.”   Inside, from his well-worn armchair, eyes closed with an expression of pure bliss, he would conduct the massed choirs at the Albert Hall in stereo.  

“Listen, listen, bloody beautiful, mun,” as the music reached a particularly difficult part.   The crescendo  would see him join in the singing and expand his conducting with gusto.

Afterwards, visually tired by the experience he’d wipe the record again with the chamois and return it to its place, folding the chamois carefully.

Uncle Ted died, as many others, from cancer, caused by coal dust and cigarettes, but his spirit still fills the small living room, now crowded with plastic flowers and chalk ornaments brought from Aunty Ade’s holidays in Porthcawl at the Miners’ Rest.   is porH His portrait sits in a gold frame, pride of place atop the now silent, highly polished,  radiogramme.   I will always have a lingering voice in my head, “Listen, listen, Bloody beautiful!”