Bowhill nights

Most families have traditions. Some always have fish on a Friday, some stay up to ‘see the bells in’ on Hogmanay, others let off hundreds of rounds of live ammunition into the air from a Kalashnikov during weddings. Us, well be all drove to my Auntie’s on Boxing day and slept over.

This was a real treat for me as my Auntie and Uncle lived in a massive house with a huge garden. I think this substantial piece of property was courtesy of a sizable redundancy package my Uncle benefited from when the Francis colliery shut down. The thing I remember most about that house was the hall. In my memory it is 50 yards long, 15 yards wide and with about 20 rooms coming off from it on both sides. In one room, near the end on the right, so not often visited due to the extreme distance, there was a pool table. Just like the ones you got in pubs and amusement arcades!

Two other rooms off that hall also sit firmly in my memory. These were the bedroom and sitting room belonging to my Dad's dad, or Dai (pronounced die) as we called him. Wee Jock had moved in with my Auntie after his wife had died from Lung cancer at a relatively young age. He had basically transplanted his old sitting room at home into this new room at his daughter's. The reason I remember these rooms so well is because it was in that sitting room that I first saw my Dad properly cry. He had always been a bit of a softy when it came to things like Lassie and Little House on the Prairie so I had seen him shed a tear before, but this was something different. Surrounded by all his Mum's things, which had been brought from the old house to furnish this new sitting room, I guess it was just too painful. He wept.

I remember the bedroom because on these boxing day sleep-overs I shared a bed with my Dai. Now this is strange given the massive house and the large number of rooms with beds in them. But it seems at some point in the past I had asked if I could share a bed with Dai, mentioning that I liked his smell! Can't think why. A heavy smoker and drinker who used to slick his hair back with milk to hold it in place, I cannot imagine the smell would be generally regarded as pleasant. In reality I had talked my little self into a corner. Having said I wanted to, I didn't then want to hurt any feelings by backing out. I actually found the whole experience quite unpleasant for a number of reasons. Firstly, plain and simple he snored. Secondly his body, when clad only in Y-fronts and vest (tucked in) was a collection of tattoos and miners scars, like Robert DeNiro in Cape Fear but with a lot of the air let out! The final reason, and the real clincher, was the cup of phlegm on the bedside table. Yes that is correct, I said a cup of phlegm on the bedside table! Poor wee Jock had worked down the pit all his life since he was about 13. This combined with 30 B&H ever day for 40 years had left his lungs in a fairly parlous state. Through the night he would be coughing his lungs up and spitting the resultant product into a china tea cup which he kept on table by his bed. In the morning, when I got up early to watch kids TV, I would hazard a peek at the contents. My stomach still turns to this day as I remember the cup of greeny brown phlegm, marbled with dark red blood and flecked with jet black coal dust.

After a few years of this I plucked up the courage to ask if I could sleep in another room. Duly ensconced in my own suite of rooms I slept like a king. I didn't know it but that was to be the last year of the Boxing day sleep overs. All the kids grew up, moved out and relationships changed. The house was sold and my Auntie, Uncle and Dai moved to a smaller place up the road. Not long after that my Dai became quite ill and moved into a home. I visited him once before he died and was strangely comforted to see the china cup on his bedside table.