Even though I was now alone, the nurse within me remained. I felt it was my calling – I’d been born to look after others, and I still did so. At Christmas, I’d open my house up to my friends and neighbours, but during the remaining winter months I’d feel lonely. I’d spent my whole life being a nurse, and suddenly I found myself a retired widow with too much time on my hands. I still had my friends, and Ann and Tony, but I felt at a loss. So when I heard Doncaster Royal Infirmary was looking for volunteers, I stepped forward.
It was 2006, seven years after Peter’s death, and despite being 74 years old I felt the need to return to work and make a difference. Even though I’d been a nurse for over 58 years, I was deemed far too old to do my job. Instead, I was given monotonous tasks such as filing, photocopying or, if I was really lucky, I was asked to run errands for the Occupational Health Department. I felt despondent and completely under-used. I considered leaving, but then I moved again, this time to day-care theatre admissions, where patients underwent cataract operations. I was given a little more responsibility, but I still wasn’t allowed to administer eye drops or even take blood pressure. The hospital insurance wouldn’t cover me because I was too old. Once more, I became a general dogsbody. I cleared away laundry, showed people to the wards and took bloods to the haematology department.
In a bid to get a bit of excitement back in my life, I decided to enter a competition run by Age Concern. I reasoned that, even with my advancing years, there was plenty of life still left inside me. The competition posed the question, What have you always wanted to do? So, as a bit of a joke, I wrote, Wing walking and flying a glider. I posted my entry and forgot all about it. So, you can imagine my surprise when I received a phone call a month later saying I’d won and I needed to travel to an airfield in Cirencester for the flight! I’d done a few terrifying things over the years, including riding on top of the cage during the pit-shaft inspection, but being strapped to the wing of an aircraft was a first, even for me.
‘Smile!’ the cameraman shouted from an adjacent plane as I flew alongside him, hundreds of feet up in the air, strapped to a glorified bicycle seat!
My neck craned as I glanced across and grimaced. I wondered what on earth had possessed me to do such a crazy thing as the wind blasted against me, stealing my breath. Once I had both feet back on the ground I began to shake, and I didn’t stop until hours later.
It had been quite an adventure, and I’d been bitten by the bug. A year later, I travelled in a hot-air balloon and tried my hand at skydiving. Nothing, it seemed, could stop me. Maybe I’d been missing the adrenalin rush from my days at the pit and my airborne activities were a way of filling the void – I really can’t say. All I did know was that I wasn’t going to let a silly thing like age get in my way.
I’d always been useful as a nurse, but as a hospital volunteer I faded into the background and felt totally lost. I left Doncaster Royal Infirmary in 2011, aged 79 – the oldest nurse in town. Hospitals had never held the same kind of job satisfaction that I’d got from working down a pit. I still miss those days now.
Hatfield Colliery remains open, but only just. After I left in 1988, the pit passed through many different companies and was even featured in the 1996 film Brassed Off. It is the last viable deep pit in the country. Today, it’s run by Hatfield Colliery Employee Benefit Partnership, but only last year (2014) the NUM had to step in to prevent the pit from closure with a £4 million loan. The union came forward after the colliery failed to secure cash from either the government or the banks, even though the pit stands on 50 million tonnes of coal reserves. At 1.2 million tonnes a year, it means there’s still another 40–50 years’ worth of coal mining left at Hatfield, but it is being threatened by cheap coal imports from as far afield as Russia and America. At its peak, Hatfield employed 2,000 men. That number has now dwindled to just 434 employees and 60 contractors. In early 2015 the government gave Hatfield Colliery a commercial loan of £8 million to help avoid immediate insolvency and support its managed closure by 2016. Two other deep coal mines, Kellingley in Yorkshire and Thorseby in Nottinghamshire, are due to close in October 2015, leaving Hatfield Britain’s last remaining underground coal mine. It is a very sad time for a once proud industry.
My old medical centre has been demolished and replaced with a new brick building, which houses a reception, offices and a couple of vending machines instead of a canteen. It also contains a much more compact medical centre. The nurse, who is also a redhead like me, is the lovely Sister May Justice. Sister Justice and I once worked together, albeit at different pits, during my last three years there. She is supported by one MRA, the very knowledgeable Gary Dexter. Together, May and Gary treat and tend to the entire workforce. As is the way with modern life, their jobs are now contracted out. There’s no pit ambulance, either, and there hasn’t been for years. If there’s a serious medical emergency they have to call 999.
Although May and Gary both do fantastic jobs, the changes are sadly a sign of the times. I belonged to an era where a job was a job for life, and a time when village life and pride were paramount. The men are still proud of their pit, and they should be, but some of the miners are now employed from outside the surrounding villages. Both the old way of life and job security are being taken from them, piece by piece. I find it all terribly sad.
I belong to a different time, and I miss it greatly. I miss the banter of the men, the miners’ jokes and their (often) filthy language. It’s something I would never have experienced working inside a sterile hospital. The miners were and still are the bravest and most remarkable men I’ve ever had the privilege of working with. At times, caring for them was a hell of a responsibility, but it was a role I cherished and carried out with pride. My men knew that if they were ever trapped and injured down the pit, no matter how bad their injuries were, I would always go to them. Over the years, I became a mother, sister, confidante and friend to the 2,000 men in my care.
Today, I’m 83 years young, and although my legs aren’t what they used to be, I have no plans to slow down. Sadly, many of the miners I worked with have since passed away. I miss them all. But, if anything, it spurs me on to seize the moment, because life is for living, and I plan to enjoy each and every moment of it.