Brilliant story. I know Deal very well indeed, as my mum's side of the family are all from the Kent coast - merchant seamen mainly.
As a kid, I used to get taken down there by my grandparents, to stay a couple of days with my great-grandmother. Many fond memories of chucking stones off the pebble beach into the sea and watching the lifeboat go out down the ramp. I was a bit too young for fishing, but we used to collect winkles off the rocks and take them back home for my great grandma to boil up with vinegar - lovely!
Similarly, I got to know the Kent miners very well in later years - many of whom were also fishermen. There were three pits: Snowdon, Tilmanstone and Betteshanger.
At the time of the miners’ strike I was living with a girl who’s dad was a miner at Tilmanstone. As railwaymen we were very involved in trying to support the miners anyway, so I got to know many of them very well indeed during that difficult year. As the writer observes, they were tremendous people and admirably militant. Even when the rest of the miners went back, Kent stayed out. Unfortunately, like all the other collieries around the country, those mines are just a distant memory now.
