Wigan Album

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, Eddie. I wish I'd had a camera to take the everyday views earlier in my life - buses, coal mines etc - which I saw day in and day out - have now gone with no personal record. At least you recorded something which I, for one, rate nearer 10 on the Interest scale, simply because few other similar images exist of this local activity which had a massive effect wherever opencast, and the subsequent infilling with rubbish, occurred. Well done!

Thanks David, in an ocean of apparent apathy and disinterest, your comments help sustain and encourage. My own experience is that photographs only start to become interesting after 25 years or so. I have quite a sizeable collection of images, some are quite good, others less so, but even the best ones don't compare to the ones in my memory, the ones I didn't take. Life can be a strange thing at times can it not? Regards. Eddie.

Will give it 10/10 for perspective ! Could do a charcoal sketch with a couple of touches of raw sienna and yellow ochre pencil. The misty background is nice.

Here's an idea Veebee, why not put one of your pictures on here? Go on.........why not? ....... just as long as it's Wigan themed..........go on......what's the worst that could happen?............,I promise I won't laugh.......honest. Go on, give it a go. I'll tell you what, if you put one of yours on, I'll put one of mine on. Can't say fairer than that now can I?

Gulp! You might as well have me thrown to the wolves! Anyway I didn't know you dabbled. I have only taken art up since I retired.....and I can't make my mind up what to put in our exhibitions in the library once a year! What I can imagine with your picture of the opencast mine is a ghostly column of battle weary Wigan Tommies returning in spirit -and trudging along the rim-loaded down with their packs. Forgive my ignorance about the pit and whether there really were men from there who did go to fight as -I know miners were in a reserved occupation. Thats what these pictures remind me of-especially the massive Spanbroekmolen crater.....which I have seen when I went to the Battlefields a number of years ago.

Forgive me for going off topic, but since you brought the subject up Veebee, having visited many of the hundreds of Commonwealth war graves in both Picardy and Belgium and seen for myself the countless thousands of names inscribed on memorials such as Thiepval, Tyne Cot, or the Menin gate at Ypres, then pausing to reflect on the state, that our illustrious, over privileged, overpaid, Eton educated, expense claiming political leaders have led this country into, I can't help but wonder, was it all worth it? I shall now pack a few items and await patiently the arrival of the unmarked vehicle that will whisk me away to some secret location to have what little remains of my mind deleted.

Before Rev gets back and corrects me it is the other crater I mean the S panbroekmolen was filled with water and is known as the Pool of Peace I think -I will have to look up the other one. My memory is like cotton wool, I shall never get over that visit. It gave me the opportunity to find my gt Uncle's grave at Dickebusch

Wipers, Plugstreet, Dickybush, Eat Apples. These were just a few of the many Belgian and French town names appropriated by the Tommies, and changed ever so slightly in order to make them more phonetically acceptable. If I'd have been around Passchendaele at the time time, I would have probably renamed the Belgian town of Bellewaerde, close to where the Hooge crater is situated, Belly Warch. Now if that isn't a candidate for the ' Webster's revised dictionary of Wigan Words ' then I really don't know what is.

No comment about your craters, Vb - but many miners did go to war. Many were in the local territorials - the 1st/ 5th Manchesters - so would be among the earliest to be called up. They could probably have claimed exemption, but I think, sadly, too many thought it might be a big adventure... and maybe less dangerous than staying down the pit.
Miners, of course, were the core of the men who dug the tunnels to lay the mines which caused those craters - Pioneers in the Engineers.

I am reminded of the Bairnsfather Cartoons when seeing those unpronounceable names you mention Eddie- the humour shining through the horror. Also Rev it is good for you to catch me out -it keeps me on my toes! My grandfather and his 3 brothers were all miners and 2 were killed. I have one more grave to visit at Esnes Communal Cemetry of one Joseph Catterall killed in the 3rd week of the war aged 17yrs. Death will stand grieving in that field of war. Since your unvanquished hardihood is spent. And through some mooned Valhalla there will pass. Battalions and battalions, scarred from hell; The unreturning army that was youth; The legions who have suffered and are dust. Siegfried Sassoon,'The Troops'. They said it all didn't they those War Poets? And those that did return faced the ignominy of class struggle and the need for better working conditions.

How on earth did we get from New Springs to Neuve Chapelle, Whelley to the western front, or from pits to poets ? We'll have to go steady here Veebee or run the risk of boring some people's pants off. They've given a keen frost for the next few days and I would hate to have anyone's shrivelled lower extremities on my conscience.

Your right Eddie.

Alan. Take a walk.