Open Writing

Two air-borne elements helped form the peculiar trademark of one-time West Riding industrial areas -- smoke and soot, whilst with those manufactures there lingered the assorted and associated aromas one came to expect and accept with the production of ‘muck and brass’. People were engrained with a sense of soot.

It was within one of these regions that our village lay and where I grew up in surroundings whose appearance might be summed up by the word ‘drab’. When a ha’porth o’ Dolly mixture looked like Blackpool illuminations, and freshly ruddled flags made you blink your eyes.

Stonework, woodwork, metalwork and definitely housework were all either soot-stained, soot-laden or soot-infested. Original surface shades might only be seen for a brief period of time -- when they were new, recently washed or freshly painted. It did not take long afterwards for them to become ‘as black as t’obbs of ‘ell’.

Soot then was an ever-present feature in all our lives. We lived with it in our midst, breathing the stuff and unwittingly eating it at times. Touch any outdoor surface, and one’s hands became begrimed. Freshly washed clothes would regularly receive an unwelcome quota of soot smuts as they hung on outdoor washing lines. House-proud laundresses hoped clothes would dry before becoming soot-spotted. Then the black deposits might be shaken off, unlike when wet clothes collected the unwelcome precipitations. That occurrence called for scrubbing brush and soap to remove the infestation, possibly resulting in a water stain on the fabric, a definite ‘black mark’ in the eye of the toiling housewife.

The grimy sediment penetrated everywhere, or so it seemed. Children would often be seen running around outdoors, clutching slices of bread-and-something in their begrimed hands. These left black imprints on the white bread, but, regardless, all was consumed. Periodically a child’s sooty index finger would change shade when wetted in its mouth to be used as a ‘kali-dipper’, being plunged into a paper bag to emerge encrusted with the coloured crystals contained therein, then to be sucked clean by its owner. The digit, however, retained the kali shading, red or yellow perhaps, depending on the particular favour being consumed at the time, this in stark contrast with the rest of the black hand.

Stand on the surrounding hilltops on a Sunday morning at the end of the annual holiday week and, weather willing, the valley floor with its mass of buildings dressed overall in their traditional grey-black garb might be clearly viewed. By that same Sunday evening the familiar dark and dreary shroud would have already begun to weave its silent weft across the rooftops. Mill boiler fires were being lit in preparation for the following morning’s ‘start-up’, and long before the next weekend that dingy winding sheet would have wreathed its silent path over the entire area, obscuring the overall scene for a further twelve months. High winds might bring temporary relief, but when they abated, the oppressive covering would quickly be re-laid.

It was not, however, mill chimneys only which disgorged their black carbonaceous clouds. There were also the umpteen domestic flues which each day added their contribution to the bronchitic-breeding pall.

Neither was it stationary chimneys alone which provided exits for smoke. There were mobile ones: road engines, road rollers, tar boilers and railway locomotives, all puffing or chuntering their way around the highroads, byroads and shunting yards, or screaming along main lines funnelling their contributions of grime into the air, laying reeky express trails in their wake. Light relief to such scenes was added by the showers of sparks fired into the atmosphere from the glowing bellies of such thundering monsters, black locomotives hauling black snaking wagons filled with coal and more coal, food for the insatiable maws of domestic and industrial hearths.

Contrasting sharply with the black mass belching from the loco’s funnel was steam, hissing its way from cylinders and valves in billowing clouds, or streaming veil-like along the metal. Often the fascinating spark showers would ignite the grassy wayside areas. Then the smell of the burning grass with its blue-white fumes would add further pollution to the already burdened air.

It was steam which on frosty mornings relieved the atmospheric gloom. Then one might view the white vaporous clouds slowly ascending from piles or trails of horse muck which liberally adorned the roadways and which aroma mingled gently with those from mill dye-houses, pit slag heaps, chemical and gas works.

Viewing such a formidable list of fragrances, it causes one to wonder how there was space in the sordid atmosphere for any health-supporting air proper.

One night each year, however, would witness a change in outdoor aromas -- Bonfire Night. Then it was that the pungent smell of wood smoke permeated all around, wood smoke and that of any other combustible substances which were too big to fit onto or into house fireplaces. These could include flock beddings or straw palliasses,
whose fumes mingled with the tang of brimstone and gunpowder. Sniff deeply and there may be the restage of the scent of a burnt tattie as it was dragged from the fire’s embers.

In some instances bonfires were lit a few feet only from houses in their cramped yards. Under such circumstances yet another aroma would occasionally percolate the night air, that of heated paint on house doors rising in blisters, which remained as reminders throughout the ensuing year, or perhaps longer, depending upon the landlord’s attitude towards repairing the damage.

The early darkening nights of the falling year were those on which we young ones, when in possession of a flashlight, would impatiently await the onset of natural blackness. When night fully descended, then we would use our lamps to ‘sky scrape’. Because of air impurity, the beams swathed high into the murk and we would vie with each other as to whose was the most powerful light.

Other beams were more permanent, at t’ pictures, at least for the duration of films being shown, when the projectors were being operated. Couple these with the flashlights used by the usherettes, and at times the picture house resembled a military tattoo or, as was later to be acted out for real, when anti-aircraft battery searchlights fanned the skies whilst their associated guns raised their own smoke barrages.

Smoke haze also filled the picture houses. Cigarette and pipe emissions at times would blend with the audience’s steaming clothes, then drying out as a result of their owners queuing outside in watery conditions. At such times it was a wonder the screen was at all visible. The place resembled a steam room or a tropical hot-house, especially when, during the interval, an attendant squirted scented ‘air purifier’ from a bug spray. Many people gladly inhaled the bouquet as a blessed alternative to the fetid vapours which filled the auditorium, but the picture usually dispelled any discomfort.

It was in such an element that we young ones would delight in rolling silver paper into small pellets and flicking them into the projector’s beam. The pellets’ reflections in the bright light resembled sparks and would set many a timid member of the audience onto the edge of the seat in readiness for a quick get-away, anticipating a general conflagration at any moment.

Should a girl with long hair chance to sit on the row immediately in front of us, then a good drag on a cigarette provided a mouthful of smoke, which, when blown surreptitiously into her abundant tresses, was almost guaranteed to create panic when a neighbour noticed the vapours rising menacingly from out the crowning glory. Visions of a human torch filled the minds of observers, and the unfortunate victim received a head-battering. Meanwhile, we young perpetrators adopted our customary look of angelic innocence and concentrated our attentions on the screen’s activities. Well, we appeared to be doing so.

There was one other type of smoke which made an annual appearance. At least it did so in our walk of life -- cigar smoke. Christmas was the only time of the year when that particular aroma assailed our noses. The smell of cigars for us meant it had to Yuletide, and many non-smokers savoured the vapours in Bisto-sniffer fashion. It made their festive season as much as did the pudding or a brass band.

The soot-darkened buildings of those days were well matched by a drably-clothed local population, Lowry-like figures going about their ways in dark-coloured wearing apparel. Brilliant shades were rarely seen. Brides and children did wear white or pastel shades, but not for long. One reason for dowdy shades was the economy-enforcing surroundings. ‘Yer can’t ‘ev owt on uts leet-cullered aboon five minits afoor it’s black breet’.

Come November time, and the already overburdened atmosphere became heavier yet, with the nose-bunging, cough-inducing, brochitic-breeding fogs. In later and more affluent years such gloominess would be termed ‘smog’, but in the times of which I write we couldn’t afoord owt as posh as that, so we just kept sucking fog up our nooases.

As this grey-black invader rolled over all like a tidal wave, obliteration of familiar surroundings might last for a week. Nothing could penetrate it. All smells were trapped beneath its blanket. It was possible on a Wednesday to smell the cooking of Yorkshire pudding from the previous Sunday. People, creeping through the murk, bumped into other people and cursed them. Others bumped into lamp posts and apologised to them. Tramlines were used as direction finders. Taken too far, though, and you could end up in the tram sheds. Houses became filled with the stuff. Gas lights were dimmed all the more so by the creeping wraith, which was sucked up the chimney by the fire’s induced draught, there to mingle with coal fumes and layer itself on all and sundry in an ever-thickening drape.

When the death-head was finally lifted, when an atmospheric change trundled the stuff away, then what a blessed relief was felt by all. Folk gladly gulped down lung-fulls of normally putrefied air and thrived on it. They no longer walked about with their arms outstretched in front of them. Debtors resumed their customary dodging in and out of doorways and back alleys because they were once more in full view of their creditors, whilst piles of horse muck could be seen and thus avoided. Household fires burned bright once more, sending showers of sparks skywards from thousands of chimneys. Guy Fawkes Night was celebrated by the burning of smoky bonfires, and the whole unfavourable cycle began all over again.

Residents of the distant northern towns, those who live in the permanently white wildernesses, would never believe their ears, nor scarcely trust their eyes were they to learn of black snow. They had their permafrost. We had our permasoot. Snowflakes, described on occasions by eye witnesses, as ‘cumin’ dahan us big us ‘awf crahns’ would be blackened before they had landed. A contest developed almost between snowflakes and soot flakes. Which would win? It was a one-sided affair, though. The natural elements stood no chance. Snow clouds eventually retreated, whilst the sooted murky mess kept up its perpetual delivery, and by sheer volume maintained habitual domination.

Traffic quickly pounded snow and soot into a grey broth through which mankind and horses slipped and slithered until the slush froze. Then they crunched, slithered and slipped. Between the two extremes of falling blackening flakes and their transformed end, there was for us children, the sport of snowballing, which in this instance gave another meaning to being black-balled. Whatever the colour, we took it as it came and enjoyed it. Icicles too, when obtainable, were impregnated with the black stuff. We could taste it as we sucked on the frozen spikes, mixed with rust from the drainpipes from whence they came.

An eventual thaw allowed the return of usual drabness, and an atmosphere chilled by the damp, biting thaw wind caused household fires to be well stoked, thus maintaining the umbrella haze to which we were all so well accustomed.

Looking back through the smokiness of time and the thicker fogs of past reality, I see the ghosts of my early days in happy play, irrespective of the mucky environment. I miss the steam-scream of a night train and the rattle-clang from a distant shunting yard, along with the unforgettable introduction to adventurous travel, that heady bouquet peculiar to coal-day railway stations, compounded from boiler smoke, steam, new paint, creosote and Jeyes Fluid. They don’t brew stuff like that anymore.

In those long-gone days coal reigned supreme, and we who were subjects within that sovereign’s realm bowed to the power and influence which governed our lives. Today King Coal has been usurped. Even Yuletide cigar smoke is deemed socially unwelcome. The surrounding air is no longer polluted by chimney effluent. What was once an accepted part of life is now regarded as life-impairing. Instead we are obliged to lubricate our lungs with the oily exhaust fumes of infernal combustion engines, along with the occasional spillage from a ‘never-fail’ nuclear industry, from which we are endowed with a mushroom-shaped cloud.