Day 205

Isn’t it typical how the weather starts looking up again now that the Bank Holiday is over! Oh well, I suppose it’s just sod’s law...

And it’s sod’s law how I didn’t get 17 chapters edited, as hoped – in fact I’m still on editing chapter 13, so I think I can safely say this second draft is taking a little longer than initially expected.  In all likelihood I will probably have 17 edited by the end of this week instead. Not to worry though, as long as it’s moving along (even at a snail’s pace) that’s all that matters.

My poem The First Shift, which I wrote in commemoration for the 60^th Anniversary of the Easington pit disaster, and which I recorded at The Studio in Hartlepool with the other Easington Writers, has now been uploaded to the Listen Up North website and can be found using the following link:

http://www.listenupnorth.com/writer-profile/275

I read it out on Saturday 28^th May at Easington’s Memorial Avenue, along with the other Easington Writers who recited poetry of their own, to an audience of perhaps forty.

Sunday 29^th May marked the actual 60^th anniversary, and I, along with the other Easington Writers, read out at Easington Welfare Hall to an audience of around thirty. This time I read out a different poem of mine, 29^th May 1951, which was more specific to the disaster, which can be read below:

29^th of May 1951

It was a Tuesday morning like any other

So how could those men have known?

That Death & Fate had swooped hand in hand

To where they worked down below

It was half past four, the village still slept

When Death came thundering down

And Fate rose hot in fiery flames

Reverberations shook the ground

Fate was cruel, trapping all those men

From those they knew up above

And Death was greedy, taking so many

Caring neither for family nor love

The families kept waiting,

Hoping and praying for news of their men to pass

That they’d be ok and walk out unscathed

High hopes in their hearts of glass

Alas there was none, their lives were all shattered

They learnt the horror of Fate

So for the sake of those men and all they held dear

Let’s always remember this date

Tomorrow I shall be reading out one last time at Beamish. The Easington Writers will be opening the service at the Memorial Chapel. Then for the rest of the week I will be slogging away at Slippery Souls.

That’s all of my news for this week, and since I’m four chapters behind already I’m off to do some catching up!