Tommy

He was a coal miner from Lancashire. Each and every weekday afternoon I used to see him coming home from the pit still wearing his safety helmet and steel-toed boots after finishing the six-to-two shift. Tommy and his family lived right across the street from me. As soon as he'd got cleaned up he'd be out in his back garden tinkering with his Ariel 500 Twin motorcycle with sidecar until his wife Kathleen called him in for tea. It wasn't until some decades later that I heard a rumour that Tommy had challenged my dad to a friendly wrestling match in our front garden but for one reason or another it never actually took place. It’s the kind of thing Tommy would do on a whim. That's why I liked him. If I had to, I'd have stuck-up for Tommy. That's because he taught me all about motorcycles, you see.

There was a small wooden garage in Tommy's back yard, the front was hinged so that the motorcycle and sidecar could be driven inside where, under his guidance, I learned to change engine oil and install a new filter. Before long I was able to check tyre pressures and adjust the tension on a drive-chain. For the first time in my young life I was awe struck to see a pressure-plate assembly while he let me watch him change a clutch. This was a whole new world for me. It was a wonderful and exciting world of engines and oil and noise and power and the gateway to unrestricted travelling independence. Imagine, not having to wait for a train or a bus or depend upon exhausting peddle-power to get from point A to B. I saw possibilities without limits! The thrills; the adventures; and the freedom to explore places near and far would soon be within reach. In those early years, I was an impressionable boy and it was Tommy who surely made a lasting and profound impression on me. He was the one to open the door to the wonderful world of motorcycles – something I continue to enjoy even today.

Underneath his gruff exterior was the kindest, caring, gentle man that I have ever had the pleasure of getting to know. Above all else, his wife Kathleen, son Harold and daughter Mildred came first – a quality that I admire in a good family man. Harold had a long and successful career as an Opera Singer and Mildred, had a short career with the Manchester and Salford Police as a Police-woman. She married, had two sons and had a long and successful career with Salford Social Services. It was as close to a “model family” as it's possible to be. And ….that did not mean that Tommy hadn't faced trials and tribulations of his own including life and death danger.

As a reservist in the Territorial Army he was one of the first to be drafted overseas on board a Troopship with others of his miner T.A. colleagues. The Troopship was torpedoed by a U-Boat .The torpedo impacted and exploded in the ships coal-bunkers and the mass of the coal helped moderate the severity of the explosion thus providing enough time to transmit an SOS. Coal miners saved by the very thing they were most familiar with, true irony!  An Australian destroyer arrived on the scene and rescued all members aboard by getting them to walk a plank between the two ships to safety before the Troopship finally sank. Tommy was delivered safely back to England.

He was the kind of man that people looked up to. Everybody called him Tommy. His friends called him Tommy. So did his workmates at the pit - the pride of Atherton back in the forties and fifties. So did his neighbours living on Car Bank Street. He was my neighbour too! Yes...everyone called him Tommy – all except me. I called him Mr. Sharples.