Dr Robert Clifford who has been a Bevin Boy gives a description of a special character and an underground drama.

Canary Wales

I am a collier, that is to say I work down a coal mine and am one of the ten percent of miners who actually work at the coalface. The name of our colliery is Burkit; as you can probably imagine miners working at other colliers when talking about Burkit often replace the ‘K’ for an ‘SH’.

I work on the ‘Three’s Face’ which is three miles out from the pit bottom, and the mine is half a mile below the earth’s surface.

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Communicating and a fable.

The Bridge

She sat watching him, busy at work on the other side of the water.

She said, ‘I do admire the energy and aggression in the way you work. How can you spend so much time building a bridge when you are running a successful farm?’

He said, ‘It is just a question of motivation, and that is a very long story.’

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A picture of a character, a house party that turned into something else and you might be moved.

The House Party

We had all sworn at university that we would meet up for a week in twenty years’ time. For all the twenty years after qualifying we kept in touch by the bi-monthly bulletins from Forbes-Watson, secretary.

Forbes-Watson was by far the most successful of us all; having said that, he was the one with the most money. He had just managed a pass degree in geography at university which was the worst of all of us.

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Another version of the second coming of Christ, in the same genre as Jerome K Jerome, The Passing of the Third Floor Back. As one reader said it makes the hair stand upon the back of his neck.

The Man in the White Cotton Gloves

Nobody saw him without them—he always wore white cotton gloves.

He came to our town the day after the vicar travelled to London for a brain operation. He arrived unexpectedly and unannounced at the Church House, wearing a pair of shabby flannels, a well-worn coat with leather elbows, and carrying a battered, much-travelled suitcase and the thing that puzzled us most, he wore white cotton gloves.

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A fascinating folk story with an unexpected twist at the end.

The Queen’s Champion

The Queen, who was the fairest in all the land and who was said by the wise men to be the fairest of all Queens, had come to take part in time-honoured tradition of choosing her Champion.

The custom was that when the Queen was in the full bloom of her womanhood, all the men of the nation, who had some particular skill or prowess, should come to the four-day games and compete before her.

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This sensitive heart-touching story is set in the 1960s. It is wound around a four-thousand mile trans-Saharan safari, which the doctor author was fortunate enough to experience, and includes a pioneering journey across the dreaded five-hundred square mile Ténéré Desert, between Algeria and Niger, in the middle of which is a single tree. Be prepared to be moved to tears.

The Tree

L’arbre du Ténéré is the only tree marked on the topographical maps of Africa

I was doing my final year anatomy and physiology when I met Mike Bullock. He was a final clinical year student and we both played for the hospital rugby side. He, as his name implies, was a big, solid, front row forward, while I fancied myself as a dashing wing three-quarter.

He was one of those gentle giants who, whatever the circumstances, could never be really provoked. A true ‘man’s man’ – smart, pipe-smoking, six foot one inch, and fifteen stone seven pounds in his socks.

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This story describes two relationships, one completely non-physical and the other poignantly, tenderly and sensitively physical showing what depths of intense communications can be reached in either form. This gives an extremely fascinating glimpse into people’s inner lives.

Two Sides of the Coin

Without touching

I first saw the girl when I was registering at the hotel. Picking up my key, our eyes met in the mirror behind the clerk’s head. She smiled, and something that I can’t describe or explain happened to me, not unlike a wind-taking blow to the midriff that I sometimes got in my boxing and rugby playing days at university.

It was three months before my marriage; I had taken Alison, my fiancée, to an industrial conference at a hotel near Dover; not because it had any particular interest, but for both of us to escape the ever-mounting fuss of the pre-wedding preparations, which seemed to be everyone’s concern except our own.

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