Aberfan 21-10-66

That's still a painful memory that totally spoilt the joy of winning the World Cup. It's also when I seriously considered and questioned the existence of a God. If there really is a God, how on earth could He allow that to happen?

It was the first time I had been affected by the news of a tragedy!

I was 18 and had just become engaged to wife number one. Life was good, serving my apprenticeship and still living at home with my parents in Thornley, a pit village in the Durham coal fields, coal was all around me with every village their own set of pit heaps, pit heaps I had grown up with they were just there.

Then news started to come through about Aberfan, at first a mud slide, then word of a school but the pictures on the news. Frantic parents searching for their bairns and one by one the bodies started to appear.

TBH God and religion never crossed my mind, all I could think about was those poor kids and their grief stricken parents.

Remember it vividly.
Such a dreadful happening.

It was the catylist for the landscaping of pìt heaps..

I was 10 years old and the children that died were the same age as myself and my younger brothers and sisters. I can remember watching it on TV and just remember the blackness and filth everywhere. My first time encountering the idea that children could die. It was horrible.