what colour am I ?

what Colour am I

It was a bit of a grey windy day, in shitsville.  A small village that had usurped into a town.  It's  an ex mining community.  I would say that, the colliery built this town on blood sweat and dodgy dealings.  It's history is a gutsy read.  The colliery was first sunk by an Anglo German company which comprised of an English lord  Galloway, a mining engineer Arnold Lupton and a German industrialist Her Hugo Stinnes, who formed the Northern Mining Company.  On the outbreak of the first world war, Herr Stinnes assets were seized under the new parliamentary law 'Trading with the Enemy' which kicked it's heels first here in this glorious grey village, in the year of 1913 with the sinking of the colliery and the purchase of the Barnsley Seam of coal by Herr Hugo Stinnes and his new company.  The colliery never cut coal for nearly ten years after, in 1922 when it was sold by the government to the Barber-Walker empire, who under further research revealed a connection with lady Chatterley's Lover,  and D. H. Lawrence, born in Eastwood Nottinghamshire, where the son of a miner worked in the local colliery, and fell in love with a woman of substance.  I hear, not until the Lady Barber dies, will the truth of the lady in the lake be revealed, the truth and the whole truth about what really happened over the book penned by the unfortunate lover.  Not only Trading With The Enemy, also the spark that ignited the whole trade union movement initiated in this grey villiage.  During these ten sparse years before the colliery cut coal, there was a huge depression.  After the first world war, there was little work for the men, people were spent.  There was the general strike of 1926, countless widespread miners strikes, as the unions were small and not amalgamated.  This all came to a head in this grey village, in 1936 when a breakaway union 'Spencerism' was backed by the management, and the National Federation of Mineworker's was pitted against it.  It was more or less a lock out, if you did not join the Spencer union, you did not work at the colliery.  It was later gleamed that the policy of the Spencer union was to pay on productivity and not on hourly rate, plus a sneaky false reverse increment to downgrade the men's wages.  There were a lot of arrests in the village and imprisonment with hard labour, including one woman, who was imprisoned. The end result was the creation of The National Union of Minerworkers, which replaced all other unions, the men were united in their toil, by one union.  Such is the greyness of this village, a small spark that led to a mighty fire.
In this greyness, I had been to visit the charity shop, and I had seen a workman stood by his van, behind my car.  I had been a good few minutes and he was, still there looking a bit lost.  as I approached my car, I asked him
" is there anything wrong Mr ?"
" Madam no,  I was just pondering?"
he had a uniform on, and a big company van which it is unimportant to say what company he worked for.  I noticed that he had a rather rich tan, that would suggest he had, or his parents had come from a country far blessed with sunshine, not like the greyness I was used to.
" I thought you were inspecting the back of your van, to see if I smacked it with my car ?"
" no Madam, I watched you pull in, erm, several times"
" yeah...I'm a perfectionist"
I am also wearing a uniform, as I was in the middle of a shift at work.  He is now looking at me.
" can I ask you something Madam "
" yes, ask me"
" I have been her forty minutes, and people have passed my by, and nobody has spoken a single word to me"
" really ?..Oh dear  probably because they are tired, it's an industrial place this, people are either worked liked donkeys or at home laid in bed with depression, it used to be a thriving community, but things are looking up now, investment is being made, new houses, look there's an Asda where the pit used to be "
He looked over, with a monotone glase in his eyes.
" yeah I see..but everyone is so miserable, just look, discretely at her, her clothes are dull, she don't even smile "
I looked, there was a lady, looked like a mum in her casuals just dropped her kids a playschool, or been to the post office for paper.  Yes she looked drained, looked liked she'd just popped out in her scruffs.
" you don't see that down the high street in Brighton" he said
" and another thing, I have not seen, one black person ! are there any ? are there ?"
at that moment, he looked like..a fish out of water.  With a gaping mouth of emotion.  I thought, this is a deep conversation to have just popping out of the charity shop with a flat cap and a vase in my hand.
" yes there are, believe me.  I can tell you the first one I ever saw in this village, there may have been other's but the first person I saw who had a much darker skin than me, was  a girl in 1973"
" Good God!"
" She was a girl fostered by a lovely couple, she came into out school, and I remember as it was I who made friends with her first, it was me"
He looked at me, this man, this boy, who was probably only about 25 years old.
" I guess you come from Doncaster do you ?" I said, smiling.
" No !"  he began to play the game.
" I come from Nottingham, Nottingham the city "
I smiled, 
" I was there last week, a beautiful  city, with  new trams, churches made into public houses, wide white paved streets, sleek top notch wine  bars.  It reminds me of Brighton, not the industrial greyness here that surrounds me"
" I am glad you spoke with me"  he said.
" I was begining to feel isolated and a bit freaked out, it's kind of spooky here."
" it's not always the colour that, gives you that feeling " I said
I put my hands on my stomach..
" it's sometimes this..fat..or this  Glasses..or this "  
I pointed to my brain, and to my mouth.. it's many things that, make us feel different to the normal.  Obviously the physical things are more apparent, more immediate.  But the greyness here that exists is so starkly obvious, this transient visitor had picked up on it almost on entry into the village.  He had found the greyness and its alienating force by
his inbuilt sense, probably the sense of survival.  We talked for about half an hour, people passed us, did their shopping and passed us again, it was lovely to chat with this man.
I had to go, but that meeting with that man, I hope it showed him that, we are not all overcome by the greyness.  I think I was sent there, to speak with him, as after driving off I felt a great relief, and I don't know if it had settled him, or it had settled me to come to terms with the greyness that was swamping me since I moved here,  But it's lifting , I would love my home town to thrive again..like in those years when the pit buzzer blew at half four, so the men knew to get up and catch the cage..when the wheels turned..when it wasn't grey but bright at black gold...bright with a future that rose about the greyness.