Courting

My maternal grandfather was a coal miner and so was his father before him. Most of the  men on my mother's side of the family worked in the coal industry. It was what South Yorkshire was all about for a hundred years - getting that black gold out of the earth - to service other industries and to warm people's homes.

Their lingua franca would have included terms like "pit prop", "shaft", "deputy", "overman", "tubs", "brakesman" and "banksman" and they would have shared an intimate knowledge of underground work. They belonged to a kind of brotherhood in which they relied upon each other in ways that surface and white collar workers will never know. At home, bodies blackened by coal dust, they washed themselves in tin baths by the fire.

I am a man but at work I was never a man like those men. I didn't get dirty, nor did I strain my muscles or fear methane or chilling underground noises. I dressed in a suit with a collar and tie and used my intelligence, my mental energy and my command of the English language to sail through my weeks. I used terms like "assessment", "potential", "target", "poetry", "written expression", "comprehension", "accuracy" and "pen". I showered in the morning, shampooed my hair and shaved my face.

In December 1977, our two very different worlds collided when I was invited to a job interview at Dinnington Comprehensive School, close to Dinnington Colliery. I blogged about that day thirteen years ago and here's the key scene which made that memory stick forever...

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    The interview went swimmingly. I dodged and dived and batted responses back to them that left all but one of them smiling - they surely had their chosen candidate in front of them. Then the headmaster, Mr Ingham, turned to the chair of governors. "Ahem! Have you got any questions Mr Burkinshaw?"

    A hush filled the room. I was expecting something highbrow pertaining to the advertised post. Then Mr Burkinshaw cleared his throat.

    "Aye 'edmaster, ah've just got wun question to ask 'im... "

    All eyes of the interview panel turned to him with expectation or was it embarrassment.

    "Are ye courting?"

    This irrelevant question hung in the air. 

    

    I rapidly processed it, quickly judging that the chairman was trying to clarify my sexuality. Good god, in a pit village like Dinnington they wouldn't have wanted any puftas on the staff! I was tempted to say to Mr Burkinshaw - "No, I'm not courting but you seem like a nice boy!" Instead I spluttered something about my Scottish girlfriend and how we were in a serious relationship though I refused to embellish my response with the details of my red-blooded heterosexuality...

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You see, Mr Burkinshaw was a coal miner and coal mining was what he probably saw as real work - man's work. He would have known the same working vocabulary as The Whites - my grandfather and great - grandfather. Perhaps, instinctively, he struggled to appreciate that being  an English teacher could also be proper man's work.  But if I had been gay or asexual - what would it have mattered? It was my competence, my ability to do the job that should have been his sole concern.