Black Park

A Memory of Black Park.

I can remember living at Black Park in a time when, although not so long ago, we didnt have any electric or running hot water. I lived with mum and dad in a row of cottages. My dad worked down the nearby pit and every day came home black, due to no showers there. My mum had to fill pans with water and put them on the fire to fill a tin bath which my dad sat in, in front of the fire to get washed. There was one room downstairs and one up with a small box room which was my bedroom. I often got washed outside with our nextdoor neighbour's sons under a communal tap. We had red wallpaper with yellow candles on the walls, a pot sink stood on legs in a corner and gas lamps on the walls which had made dirty marks on the ceiling and red walls. The lady next door blinded herself doing the washing and was always getting a good hiding from her husband who was permanently drunk. This time isn't in the victorian era, although it sounds it.

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