Blue Scars
Lyrics:
A photo in a sepia stack, a man with immaculate hair
Smart suit, straight back, he’s got a thousand mile stare
That’s your Great Grandad Alfred Pearce
Known as The Bull of Bestwood
‘Cause his bellow was fierce
Blue scars marred the hands of a family man
Who gave more than he took, lived life by the book and made his own plan
Blue scars marred the hands of a family man
Raised the kids in the shadow of the spoil mound, did his work under the ground
To fill the frying pan
A mine can run like clockwork if everybody’s doing as they should
But just one wet-behind-the-ears youth and it might not turn out good
Our Alfred’s got his hands in a place where they would normally be safe
But trouble comes rumbling, lumbering, humbling, thundering
And when the tubs came unexpected down the track
Alfred was strong enough and smart enough not to pull his fingers back
Blue scars marred the hands of a family man
Who gave more than he took, lived life by the book and made his own plan
Blue scars marred the hands of a family man
Raised the kids in the shadow of the spoil mound, did his work under the ground
To fill the frying pan
Now we go for walks around the spoil mound but we call it Holy Mountain
And it’s a really good spot to pick the sloes to flavour up the Yuletide gin
And I’m grateful to the people that I’ll never get to know
Who build the perfect mountainside for blackthorn to grow
Blue scars marred the hands of a family man
Who gave more than he took, lived life by the book and made his own plan
Blue scars marred the hands of a family man
Raised the kids in the shadow of the spoil mound, did his work under the ground
To fill the frying pan
My Great Grandad Alfred Pearce was a hard working man with a love of music and a greater love of his family. Prizing his morals above his employer’s profits had cost him a couple of jobs and whilst working as a farm labourer in Leicester he was pondering what to do next. He saw coal trucks going past labelled “Bestwood” and figured that there must be plenty of work there with the sheer number of trucks on the line. He hopped on his bike, cycled 35 miles and got himself a job in Bestwood Pit. That 35 mile bike ride was his commute then, until the family all moved to Bulwell.
The story about the day Alfred had the coal tubs run over his hands was seared into my memory after hearing it when I was very young. What exactly caused the incident has been lost to time but what really stuck with me was the fact that he had time enough to realise that if he tried to pull his hands away he would lose his fingers. He was a gifted musician, and above that he needed his hands to work to feed his family. So as the tubs rolled over his hands he held them there and waited until he could safely move them. He kept all of his fingers, although the coal dust got in the wounds and left him with miner’s tattoos, or blue scars.
This is what’s left of Bestwood Pit. These headstocks were the ones Alfred would have used to go to work every day for years. Two of his sons joined him down there and, presumably inspired by the injuries they both witnessed and received, they became instrumental in the unionisation of the pits in Nottingham and in setting up the St John’s Ambulance Brigades attached to each mine. Many years later, as Cadet Officer of the Radford and Wollaton Brigade, named for the pit my Grandad worked in for a time, I won a competition to perform the fastest safe recovery position in my Girl’s Brigade division. In the footsteps of my ancestors.