Now a window broken with rag curtains out onto a complex life. I read the world and thought about it.

Demolished now is the remembered place of colliery drinking and hidden slow dark painting where the dog broke its leg. And I in my hidden reading am unaccountably sad for I caused it and left it..

Three floors of false turn of the century Elizabethan black and white Xanadu. Mahogany and teak curved carved bar bacchanalia for those who did not see or understand. Or saw just grapes and naked men. Etched sash glass proclaiming the finest head breaking ales. The stink of pipe belch bleach and dreg buckets. A palace of the bored senses allowing the working man away from dirt stink sink, washing line lime, back to back home. Games of play false chance and fishing trophies. Miners in false mascara and mole skin. Black knight helmets and sheathed snap tins. Legs tied with rubber kneecaps and over ornate stools never used. Dimpled  light beer pots with colour catching stained glass telling the stories of ancient ghosts and working man massacres. The place to spend your mine chit shit. The place with father's as good brave men, salt of the self proclaimed hero. No war socialist homes to go to. None worth the name worthy of such brass band loyal memories. So Grandmother told each and everyone. While dead, seldom seen, Grandfather had drunk the however gotten gains in the Hades cellar desperation. Amongst the barrels and pipes, with the devils and buggery dark bottle crates. A coin on each eye for crossing the Leeds to black lung Styx canal.

Keep out of the way lovely lad and don't go work down the mine. Promise your Nan, now, serious. Go to church and work with your brain but not too much. Don't want you to end up like drooling Lot's lad. Watch your getting dirty knees in the dust on the round the room, with dirt shiny seating and your child learning, watching games of not touching the floor and pressing the never used, never understood,  painted shut, buttons for attention. Come here to escape the beating fool that I call a son.

You sit down when you grow, no standing at the barrack bar to fill your legs with just that extra brown split one before going home for sweet shift tea, old long piss and sleep before you start beating again after your midnight daytime shift, with Britannia's holy hypochondriac blessing.