But as time went on we began to look around for other means of passing our time after we had come out of the mine. I joined the Skelmersdale Cricket Club and went practicing every evening with a mate of mine, finally we both got in the 2nd team. We could not be like the other fellows in the team and wear the white flannels as we could not afford them. I think at that period I am writing about Skelmersdale Cricket Club was a little snobbish and thought they were the Elite of the town. I had been a member when I came across a fellow who sold me a pair of white flannels and boots, bag thrown in for 2 shillings and a pair of gloves. For this same reason I won the balling and bowling average and received 10/- (shilling - Editor) for the event. I began going to evening classes at the Town Hall, each full session cost me a shilling. These classes were a Mining Class and a First Aid Class and were run by a local Manager and a local Doctor. Father used to say first aid was an important asset to mining which I found was true in my later years.

Sport kept cropping up in our two rows of terraced houses, sometimes Piggy, Knock Up, bowling with oranges, fisting, anything that created a diversion until finally we formed a football team and this itself caused a little speculation of how this could be achieved because of the full number of people living at the New Row - this name was given to the place and I never knew why because it was about 70 years old when we got there. Anyhow a few of us got together and studied the matter and one of the young fellows had a brainwave and said,"Lets go and see owd Ramsay", this was the man who kept the shop in New Row and to ask him could we have his room over the shop which he never used, for us to use as a Commitee Room. We all trooped to the shop and started chatting with him for a while until we finally came to the point that we wanted to start a football team and asked him could we have his empty room over the shop to use as a meeting room once a week. He studied us carefully before he spoke, "Yes I will, on condition you keep the place in good order and no shinanakin up there".
We were so delighted by this that we arranged a general meeting from all who were interested and living at the place. The responce was quite overwhelming and there were many suggestions how to start. Some offered a bag of spuds, others an old hen that had done its duty in the past and was ready for the pot. Many other items were included so that we could start a raffle off to bring some cash in, anyway we got things moving. Our next job was in the field, as it happened a field had been lying dormant in front of the New Row, one side of it sloped down to the Tawd River but as luck was with us there was enough room at the top of the field for a football pitch so we got in touch with the farmer who was farming it and he was glad to let us have it at 10 bob a year as he said it would help keep the grass down.
Our next job was where we could get some goal props cheap to put up. One of our fellows spoke and said "Why don't a few of us go and see the Manager of the Collery?", this we did not like because we all knew he disliked football because of remarks he had made about football; he used to say "20 thousand fools watching 22 wise men". We decided to take a risk and see him. When we saw him he looked us up and down and considered a bit, "Yes, I will let the saw man cut the required posts for you on condition you never put my son on your team". This took us by surprise for his son used to do a bit of kicking about with us on the field and we had thought to use this as bait to get the posts by putting him on the team. Anyhow, we got the goal props and erected them and were quite pleased with the result.

Our finances were beginning to build up a little from our various raffles we had, at our next meeting in our clubroom we decided unanimously to call our football team the Glenburn Rovers because the Glenburn Colliery was only divided from our field by the River Tawd and also we all worked at Glenburn Colliery. Our next item was a commitee to see the smooth running of our club. This was rather a delicate matter because we had not many persons to choose from. Finally we decided to put Ramsay the shopkeeper as President and asked him to pick about five people to help him pick a team so that we could get going. We knew they had not much choice but it worked quite well because the commitee had their own particular sons and I think this made a good combination for us all, young and old to keep going.
The team was composed of about four families who lived in the row and two outsiders who we had got interested in us and wanted to join for the sake of having a game. We got going all right. It made quite a sensation when we had our first match, blue and white colours, playing a friendly match with a mixed lot of young fellows who had come just to have a kick around and enjoy themselves. They were dressed in all kinds of colours they could pick up and most of them wore their pit clogs instead of boots but this was quite common to them to play with clogs. Everything went well, we licked them 2-1 and when we finished the game we all had quite a surprise. Unknown to us the ladies of New Row had made us all a good Lancashire Hot Pot which we all enjoyed.

About this time the little communities of which Skelmersdale was made up of, Penny Land, Sandy Lane, Liverpool Road, Field Street, Stormy Corner, New Row, Oe'r Brook and Digmoor had decided to form a Skelmersdale and District Football League - headquarters Charlie Bailey's Chip Shop, bottom of Sandy Lane. Each team to send two representatives once a week, Monday night to arrange who to play the following Saturday. This went on smoothly for quite a while and many a good game was won and lost until that craving crept in - we can beat so and so this week. This started to infiltrate in each team and caused many squabbles with spectators and players. At New Row the Football Team (Glenburn Rovers) had started a new life to the place. We never got any trophies or medals as we always clung to the bottom of the league table, but we were quite happy as we had got to know each other intimately.

Fishing and shooting was one of our pastimes and a little spot of poaching at night time, as we had got to know the runs of the Game Keepers and Lobs from people who had been afraid to speak until they knew us thoroughly. Many times I have gone out with my elder brother with a double barrelled gun to shoot pheasants that were roosting in trees at night in a nearby wood. He was a good shot and a couple of quick bangs and down would come a couple of pheasants, sometimes three, which we would pick up and hurriedly make off. I knew from accounts we have received from men who worked at the Colliery that we were being watched. We had many friends as we gave much of our spoils away that we had poached, the simple reason, we dare not take them home for Father to see as we should have got it in the neck for doing this.

It was about this time my work at the colliery took a complete change. The owner of the colliery had bought a coal cutting machine from Rose Bridge Colliery, Wigan on condition they sent the fellow who worked it to teach one of the men at Glenburn to cut the coal. The fellow came and I was picked for the job. I'll never forget that fellow, we called him Little Ike and I took to him from the first meeting with him and I can safely say Glenburn Colliery was the first colliery to install a coal cutting machine in Skelmersdale.
It was a Driscoll Disc machine with a cutting wheel of 3ft 6ins deep and powered by compressed air. We had it taken to a coal face that had been prepared for it, the length of the seam of coal was 100 yards and was called the King Mine, also 4 foot high solid coal. This we had to cut every shift for the colliers to clear off. This was the beginning of a new era for me in coal mining because these colliers' daily output depended on three men and a machine and it was quite astonishing how that seam of coal moved forward. I worked on the coal cutting machine for about six months and was then put on different kinds of work, in a way I was there to fill any vacancies that might occur through absentees or anything. This gave me a good general knowledge of mining. I think back sometimes of the different kinds of work I have had to tackle and do and how sometimes they were daft and suicidal.