Opposite the top of Brinckman Street on the main Sheffield Road leading into Barnsley there was a bus stop. If you went there at five of a morning you would see a pile of tab-ends-Woodbines,Robins,
Park Drives.
This was the stop where the miners waited for the bus to Woolley Colliery. A couple of the tabs would have been smoked by my father. These tabs were,to misquote Elliot,the burnt-out ends of smoky mornings,the last desperate gasp before the Yorkshire Tracky hurled them towards that dark hole.
An hour before the 'knocker-up'� had tapped,tapped on the bedroom window with his long wire ended pole telling them the comfort of warm blankets and moist thighs was over too quickly.
At the bus-stop the older men would have talked of football and tap-rooms and bad working conditions. The younger would have lied about girls and the number of pints. The very young would have been wrapped in half-awake dreams of not been there at all.
For an hour then the streets would doze again before the factory workers began to hobnail it on to the streets.
The men would slog off to steel works,foundries,glassworks. The women to sewing factories and the bobbin making.
Snap tins were crammed with cold bacon sarnies and a bit of the spice cake baked at the week-end.
These Barnsley hills weren`t alive with the sound of music but with the clacking of feet and gossiping tongues.

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