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They were poor yesterday mind. Relegation fodder.

Hi Folks! Tony,welcome back,Noo!..as a bairn,growing up at Hollymount Square,from 1947-ish,it depended which way the wind blew! If ye had a North-easterly,ye had aal thi Sulphur and other combinations of chemical smells from the Aad pit heap,which burned ferociously in a strong wind,also the same from the Doctor pit heaps. If it was Westerly, ye had the stink from the Slaughterhouse across the road from us,Pigs being shot with a humane .23 Cal. bullet,by the dozen,on a peaceful Sunday Morning...it's just dawned on me this minute......THAT'S why the Salvation army used to stand reet ootside my bedroom windae,between us and the Slaughterhouse,and blast oot wi tha brass band!![ reminds me of the Clint Eastwood movie scene where the band and choir sing ti drooned oot the soond of the guys getting beaten ti hell in a shed!] In the beginning of the spring gardening season,ye were poisoned by a multitude of aal the nybors borning aal tha garden rubbish...and mind....tha used ti be fires in ivry garden practically!...tha was aalwis aal the hoose rubbish if the bin was full,Domestos bottles being the most toxic..even ti this day! When we moved ti Stakeford ,in 1970,[Me Wife,Me and wa young 2 yr aad Son],it was like Tony sed,Glaxo being the most obnoxious reek,24hrs a day.[..it was bad enough for me breathing Oxides of Nitrogen and Sulphrous fumes aal shift ,working undergrund..ti be subjected ti Glaxo wen a came yem at lowse!!] Alan,when one was a wee bairn,sharing a bed wi a Brother three years aader,and very devilish...who used ti frighten oneself by saying there's a burglar at the windae trying ti get in...blankets owa heeds,stop breathing till ya lungs were bursting,cos the man wud heor us,then when one had ti suck a desperate breath in...foul smells emanated from ones Brother....!!..[mind the three year' s made a difference in intelligence and wit,when one was aanly fowa yeors aad ,and he was sivin yeors aad!] Canny lass,the pit heaps contained thousands of tons of coal,which was thrown off the screens,by the screen belt pickers,which was the method of cleaning the coal,by throwing all the stones off the conveyor screen belts,into a chute which sent it into the hopper,that you would have seen being pulled up the heap on a railed buggy,by a hauler rope. The coal thrown off would have been full of stone "Bands",where the lump might have been mostly stone with a few thin bands of coal which wud be inseperable from the stone. NOO,at Choppington High pit,the Beaumont seam went from less than two feet high to ten feet high on the same coalface,and was full of stone bands the whole height,atrociously bad quality coal,and which also contained a lot of what the miners termed "Brass",and which used to spit and spark out of the fire and burn wee holes in the Clippy mat in front of the fire..! It wasn't Brass,it was Iron Pyrites,which,when tipped up on the pit heaps,and which was subjected to Acid rain,over the hundred -odd years,produced H2S [Hydrogen Sulphide]...rotten egg smell...highly lethal in confined spaces underground,cos it quickly kills the sense of smell,giving a false sense of security..but can poison one to death in minutes,if gud fresh air supply cannot be gotten quickly. In the case of the heaps,it wasn't so deadly because it was quickly dispersed in the wind,not before we all got a gud whiff or two.....for years ...and yeors!!! Added to this was the sulphur content of the coal,which appeared as a yellowish soft substance in the cleat of the coal,so when the heaps had lain for a few decades,the middle of the heap is like a giant compost heap,it heats up to the point where spontaneous combustion occurs,and all them nice tasy odours are released! ....mind aal the pits,not just Choppington,and Netherton,or Bedlington,wud have worked these inferior quality seams,during the Industrial revolution,and during the two world wars,the need for coal was so great,aal thi pits wud have had to extract as much as possible,being less selective,like last few decades where clean coal was required for Power sations...which was the reason for coal blending plants such as was at Lynemouth/Ellington complex,and Bates pit,to blend low Sulphur,sweet coal with the higher Sulphur,sour coal,to make it just right,cos Bates,for instance,coal was so high in Sulphur,that it was burning the Power Station boiler grids out too fast.So blending with Ellington coal solved the problem,to a certain extent. Noo in this day and age,the smells we are subjected to are mainly from foul-smelling fertiliser being spread by the farmers,Cow slurry usually,bad enough,but a few yeors back,my Wife and me had been ti Blyth on a luvly sunny day,and when we got yem,and aa oppened the car door ti get oot,and inti thi hoose,aa wuz neaorly owacum by the most obnoxious toxic odour,so strong it was catching me throat,mekkin breathin difficult..actually choking us. Thi wind had got up strong Easterly,and it started to rain torrentially. Aa phoned the police,telling them a suspected a chemical leak from the factories at Cambois...a polis came stryght doon,and as he got oot he's car HE was choking,and he hurried inti wor hoose. After a short natter,he said he was away ti Cammis ti investigate...he was back in a haaf hoor,and telt us it was coming from the farm at the Havelock. The farmer had gotten loads of HUMAN waste from the sewage plant,which was entirely legal..[whey aal thi Bates lads used ti get it from the plant where Aldi is noo..in the 1970's],and he had just sprayed all he's land,when the rain came,which prevented him from ploughing it into the land. The polis said that the condition of spraying human waste was that it had to be ploughed in within 24 hours of being applied,or the farmer could be prosecuted..but in this case it was an impossibilty for the farmer,due to the atrocious weather....so we had to endure the reek for weeks until the land dried oot for him ti plough it in..mebbe sumbody else can mind that incident? Cheers folks! HPW.