[BITList] Red dragon

[John Feltham]

Hugh,

On 01/10/2010, at 12:49 AM, HUGH wrote:

> Greyhound papers all gone, so you'll have to buy your own. 

This reminds me of our Uncle Jim. He was a retired coal miner.

On Saturdays he would take me out, I don't remember where he took me.

When we returned we got off the bus at the terminus about three houses away from his.

He always bought a green 'un or was it a pink 'un at the bus stop? And then we walked down to his house. He'd settle himself in his armchair and before he shook out his newspaper he'd take his specs off his nose. He had those 'John Lennon' round ones with steel frames from the National Health mob.

When he took them off he swung them around and then put them back on his nose.

This 'rotation' used to puzzle me. And one day I asked him why he did it.

He said, "So that I can have my reading glasses to read my paper."

Obviously I was still puzzled. So he explained that he swung the glasses round so that  one lens was exchanged with the other. One was for reading an 'tother were for long distance.

I was still puzzled.

He then asked me if I knew that he was blind in one eye?

I never knew that.

He told me that he worked down the pit as a splicer of wire ropes and one day the rope that he was working somehow caught him in the eye and blinded him.

So he had his reading and long distance lens in one pair of glasses!

:-)

I wonder if Mike remembers this?


ooroo