Apart from the “main drive”, we had several side tunnels and shafts to bore.  These side shafts were all “drill and fire” and involved the use of copious amounts of gelignite.  The guys who sank these shafts were generally Irish miners, a rough breed at best. 

    There was a three man gang of Paddies sinking a side shaft.  The leading miner was called Collum.  He was real hard case, built like the proverbial brick shithouse, and he talked with a really strong Southern Irish accent that was hard to understand when he was next to you, let alone sixty feet down a six foot shaft.  My mate Tommy Burke had warned me that Collum liked to push his weight around, and that if I didn’t stand up to him he’d make my life a misery. 

    I’d been working as their banksman for three long hard days.  Collum was screaming up the shaft for what seemed like the hundredth time for me to send  something down.  He finally lost his patience and gave me the hand signal to send the man rider down.  Man riders are cages to transport the guys up and down the shafts.  As he came up Collum was yelling that he was going to pull my head off and spit down the hole.  As he reached the top of the shaft I signalled the crane driver to stop.  The conversation went a bit like this;

    “Why don’t you pull your finger out and send what I want you fucking stupid English Bastard?”

    “Because I can’t fucking hear you above the generators.  Why can’t you make the hand signals like everyone else?”

    “Just send what I shout for or get ready for serious pain you English wanker!” 

    With that he gave the signal to the crane driver to lower him back down.  I signalled the crane driver to stop and Collum glared up at me.  I showed him one of the bags of bolts they use to fix the concrete shaft segments together.  The bag weighed about twenty pounds.  I shouted to him:

    “Watch your fucking head Collum, one of these bags could easily fall down the shaft!”

    That set Collum off laughing and he replied,

    “Okay Geordie, me and you have got an understanding!”

    From that moment on we got on pretty well, he made the correct signals and I did all I could to stop getting my head ripped off!

    Some weeks later Collum’s gang had a falling out.  Collum and one of the other guys wouldn’t speak to the third member of their crew.  I don’t know exactly what had happened but the third guy was sporting two black eyes and was missing a couple of teeth.  We were all at the main site in a porta cabin that served as a canteen.  Collum and his mate had made a cup of tea whilst the third miner, not having any tea bags, just had a cup of hot water.  Ginger came in and went up to him and said:

    “What the fuck are you drinking?”

    “Hot water.  I’m pretending it’s tea.”

    Ginger scratched the top of his helmet and said with his impeccable logic;

    “You stupid idiot!  It’s people like you who get us Paddies a bad name!  Why don’t you pretend it’s fucking lager?”

    One Friday afternoon Ginger came over to the side shaft to check it’s progress.  He came and sat with me on a pallet of cement.  I was watching a demolition gang trying to pull a building over.  They had exposed the girders of the building and had burnt wedges out of these supports.  They had then attached steel ropes to the building and were pulling and tugging it with about six tractors.  The building wasn’t budging.

    Ginger asked me how long they had been at it and I told him that all in all they had been trying to demolish it for about four days.  He smiled and said that this was an opportunity for us.  He told me to go back to the main site and bring six sticks of gelly, six detonators, and two hundred feet of cord.  I returned with the dets and gelly in two wooden boxes slung over my shoulders.  Ginger picked up the plunger and we walked over to the demolition guys.  Ginger cautioned me that he would do the talking and this is how it went:

    “Who’s in charge of this shambles then?”

    “I am”, replied the demolition boss.

    “Are you trying to get the fucking weekend out of it”

    “No it’s job and done, we should have been away yesterday”

    “We could drop that building for you in ten minutes!”

    “What are you going to do?  Huff and Puff and blow it down?”  This comment made all of the demolition gang laugh out loud.

    “You might say that, Longfella open the box!”

    The domolition boss peered into the box of gelly and asked;

    “How much?”

    “Three hundred pounds cash and we don’t negotiate” Ginger replied.

    “Do it!”

    Ginger and I went into the building and he attached the gelly and dets to the girders.  We ran the cable back to the plunger.  Ginger scratched a line with his foot and called the guy over and told him to get all his men this side of the line.  We still seemed mighty close to the building and all of the demolition team retreated a couple of hundred feet further back.  I was a bit apprehensive but Ginger told me to be cool.  He twisted the plunger, there was a few pops, then the building fell towards us.  Fetch me my brown corduroys I thought as it crashed to the ground.  Not one piece of debris crossed Ginger’s line, though some large lumps were right up to it.  The demolition guys looked at us with awe as their boss paid us the three hundred.  Ginger kept two and gave me one.  Not a bad ten minutes work at all.