When I rose this morning, awake but still weary, I checked the online tracking for a delivery coming via 'Hermes Parcels.' This is not a company with a good reputation. Placed with them on the 6th it reached the 'local depot' wherever that is, just after midnight on the 8th, Saturday. Later that morning it claimed to have been 'On its way to the courier'a claim which had disappeared by early this morning and replaced by a claim that the package was 'At the customers local depot' at 23:42 on the 8th and again at 23:49 the same date, eight minutes apart. This morning, at 9:15 the message changed to 'On its way to the courier' once again, though why this arrived at my inbox almost two hours later I know not.
So I awaited developments while suffering the requirement to sleep, the bug appears to have attacked me again. The door ajar and my ears awaiting the knock while checking the tracking constantly I expected the van to arrive sometime today. It has not! So where is it 'Hermes?'
Hermes as we all now was the 'messenger of the gods' however fewer people are aware he was also the god of thieves, chancers and those of a questionable disposition (Hello Boris Johnson!). Maybe the company is well named? Maybe I do them a disservice? Maybe they require to improve their tracking system so I know what is going on?
Tomorrow I will be at the museum wishing I was at home asleep. I canny miss this as too many are already off and as you well know Hermes will claim to deliver when I am away from base. There is another packet (more spending) that has yet to arrive via a differing courier, I think however that this one has not yet been posted, it is not expensive enough! That may arrive tomorrow when out also....
When young we often went to Cowdenbeath, where mum was born, and stayed in the miners cottage, now long gone, where she grew up. My aunt Minnie and uncle Sam remained there living on a slight ridge which gave a wonderful view over Central park, the home of Cowdenbeath F.C. at the bottom of the brae and Pit Number 7, the coal mine where Sam and my mothers three brothers worked all their lives. In 1851 the Beath area contained around a thousand people, while searching for iron ore they found much more coal and soon the 'Chicago of Fife' bloomed, indeed by 1914 some 25,000 people dwelt there most employed directly or indirectly by the pits.
Now miners world wide have a tendency to fly pigeons. This occurs in Scotland, Australia, the USA and no doubt elsewhere also, however I suspect this has lessened somewhat with the death of mining and the growth of younger miners with other hobbies. There were no pigeon lofts that I recall around the back of Chapel Street however Sam and many other miners did spend time growing their own vegetables. I suppose having spent six months on strike during the General Strike of 1926, a General Strike that saw the support of fellow union members fail after a week or so, miners like Sam and my uncles soon understood, if they did not already, that growing their own way a must. I suspect they always had done so as miners enjoy the time spent outside in the open air, that is why many took up bird fancying, and the miners of that generation were not all of the type to sit in local pubs or miners clubs though obviously many did. On one occasion uncle Sam offered me a green tomato, and he was adept at growing these, this was a tomato right at the point of turning red and it tasted delicious, one of the best I have ever had. Long years ago now but this I have never forgotten. My dad tried similar but his ground was poor, he was jealous of the men in Fife as they grew an abundance of roses, helped by the local milkmen still using horses you understand, and while he eventually succeeded they were never in his mind as good. He also spent a lot of time in the garden. The General Strike left Cowdenbeath bereft for six months, quite how they coped for that length of time is still unclear, I suspect the local Co-op gave a lot on tick, but they did and returned after much strife to lower wages. What many died not knowing was that Winston Churchill, the man who fought 'socialism' during the strike also came to hate and despise the mine owners. Churchill was at heart a liberal and realised the mine owners cared not a jot for their workers and took against them so much he suggested nationalising the mines! The Conservative Party did not agree.
Cowdenbeath today is much smaller, neater and contains around 15,000 people and almost no knowledge of coal mining remains. There once was a memorial indicating the spot the old wheel stood over while dropping the cage down to the pit. I wonder if this still exists as looking at Google Maps there appears to be a leisure centre now stands where Pit No 7 once stood. It would be a shame to have lost all memory of the reason the town exists.
I put up a tomato and end up in Cowdenbeath? Sometimes I wonder...
Here is a couple of cheap peppers, they say these contain more vitamin 'C' than an orange but I wonder. There is nothing inside them, the taste is not great, and the yellow one I ate earlier did not cure all my ailments, so maybe it is an exaggeration?
