I was born in Sutton - at the Cottage Hospital on Peasley Cross Road - and spent my early years in an ex-USAF prefab on Pollitt Crescent, just off Gartons Lane.

The school with the tub was my first taste of education. The teacher, as I recollect was a Miss Appleyard. A very nice young lady, not the least like the assortment of sadists I would later be exposed to at Robins Lane or Cowley Grammar.

My stay there was all too short and my family moved "up Sutton" (technically to Sutton Oak) to Baxters Lane when I was about 6. Sutton Manor had not, however, finished with me.

We lived for the rest of my youth at no. 1 Webb Street, opposite what was then the Sutton Oak rail sheds. My grandparents rented the big house that was once the shed manager's and my brother and I enjoyed some high old times in their very large yard and sneaking into the sheds for a look around.

After passing the 11+ I got sent to Cowley Grammar where I languished for 5 years until forced to join the working classes.

My "choice" was the coal board as an apprentice electrician.

National Coal Board, Sutton Manor Colliery.

After an introduction to life underground at Haydock it was off to polytech for a year - and I thought I'd left school.

It was there that I met a chap who was to be my best mate and later best man. His name was Joe Cowley and he lived in Sutton Manor just across the road from the colliery gates in the last house of the on Jubits Lane.

After a year of boredom the apprentices were assigned to their pits.

Mine was Ravenhead while Joe was sent to Bold. It was not common practice to rotate apprentices around the mines. The expectation was that the mine would be there for at least as long as you were.
Joe however had an ally in his father who was a semi-retired miner and ran the bath-house at Sutton Manor.
I on the other hand only had an uncle who was a deputy down Clock Face colliery and was one of the few people I really didn't want to meet on a regular basis (when I was a child he and his brother would take great delight in torturing me because of my grammar school status - their favourite trick being earspitting - kids ask your grandad).

Joe's dad managed to wangle a transfer for the young fellow. I had to wait for the realisation that Ravenhead was to be shut down.

As it worked out we were both transferred to Sutton Manor at the same time and spent the next 3 years there.
During the first year it was normal practice during holidays to send squads of apprentices to wherever menial tasks were required to be done.

So it was that at easter, christmas and so on we would be shuttled around the mines in the district to pull out old cables, drag large cable drums around and generally have our place in the scheme of things explained in an unambiguous fashion.

An old coal truck has been painted and sits outside a local school now.

Partly because of this Joe and I stayed in touch. More particularly we shared Joe's mum. For some reason mums had a soft spot for a rebellious ex-grammar boy with a beard and pimples. Possibly because I lost my mum when I was 12 although I think it was because they thought I was impossibly thick. I also got along famously with Joe's dad.
This became an essential asset in later years since it meant I got issued with Knight's Castile instead of Palmolive at the Sutton Manor bath-house. The relationship also meant that I spent much of my time around Sutton Manor even before I was transferred to that colliery. The consequence of course was that I knew that part of town better than most.

The main focus in the first year or so out of poly in a work sense was the mine to which you were assigned.
This in itself made lasting impressions on some of us. To others it was simply a function.
To a few it had a meaning.
To our bosses, elders and betters we were a right royal pain and it would be most obliging of us if we would drown as quietly as possible in the local quarry.

The electricians of the day had two major responsibilities towards apprentices.
First was to ensure that their lives were as short as possible.
Second was to ensure that the apprentice knew every trick, dodge, workaround, excuse, circumvention and nasty that would avoid any necessity for an electrician to do anything remotely resembling physical work.
An ability to prepare cocoa and tea and occasionally lie under oath were also respected virtues.

Thus it became that we fortunate few had a triple education.
We had the grounding and theory from respected parents and teachers; the ability to dodge death arisen from daily practice; an instinct for self-preservation passed down from surviving apprentices.
We also had to do all the bloody work!

The people, of course, made the occasions.
Those I remember especially were:

Dennis, an electrician of long standing who rode an Ariel VB Hunter motorcycle but unfortunately kept falling off it. That was his eventual cause for retirement and, sadly, his death. He loved cats, a species which were endemic at any mine. Ostensibly the cats would catch mice. As proof of their effectiveness there was not a mouse to be seen on the surface. This was not the doing of the cats. It was actually the mice who had engineered the situation by migrating en masse to the pit bottom. Thus the cats ruled the earth and the mice the underworld.
Both stay away from bipods.
On one occasion there was a major power failure. A 3.3 kV substation had blown up causing the number 10 shaft winder to be shut down. This was of much concern because it happened towards the end of a night shift and the poor souls below would have to walk nearly a mile to the bottom of no. 11 shaft and would arrive at the canteen to find that their breakfasts had been consumed by the apprentices coming onto day shift. Dennis was the first to arrive at the wrecked substation and valiantly rushed into the fume filled building to emerge a minute or so later with his right arm extended and, extending from it, a rigid carbonised cat fixed forever in the act of pouncing upon its enemy, in this case the mouse which Dennis dangled from his left hand.
Tears streamed down Dennis' face as he explained how the cat must have chased the mouse across the open busbars. It never made the papers but busbars in substations were enclosed thereafter.

Bill was an electrician who craved overtime. One Saturday morning he was taking insulation readings on a coalcutter motor when the cutter fell on him. All hands helped get the cutter off Bill's leg and he was pulled to safety. The rescue crew turned up about 30 minutes later. Bill was finally brought out and put on a stretcher.
As he was being carried out a voice was heard to ask if anyone had seen his foot. Until then nobody had noticed it was missing.
A couple of lads dived over the back of the cutter and returned with the trophy a few minutes later.
Complete with boot.
Since there was no other option on the trip out, it was placed on Bill's chest. This proved to be a bad move since the foot kept falling off. Accordingly it was wedged into the webbing securing Bill's head to the stretcher.
Arriving at the pit bottom the stretcher and its load were perched on top of a coal tub and readied for the trip to the surface. The tub was propelled into the cage at the standard loading speed (there was no other setting). The tub bearing Bill entered the cage and stopped abruptly while his foot carried on. When Bill arrived at the surface he was taken to the first aid centre (actually a rundown shack) while his foot was retrieved from the washery.

Jack was a brawler of the first order. Thickset, savage and with a deep and sincere hatred of apprentices who did not properly make his tea. He was afraid of cats. And was known to faint at the sight of his own blood.

Then there was Tom. He worked perpetual nightshifts solely so that he could be on a particular street corner at an early hour in order to abuse his ex-wife as she drove by on the milk trolley. The unfortunate fact was that he was a bloody awful electrician. A large part of my night shift activity comprised chasing Tom around fixing his fixes. That he was allowed to roam the entire underground sprawl of the mine didn't help.

Of course there was old Jim, the Electrical Engineer at Sutton Manor. A nice chap, close to retiring and close to himself.
I worked the Friday night shift when we would change over from the National Grid to our own power.
Sutton Manor had its own generators, two of them. A 1928 MetVick set and an English Electric set from sometime in the 30's. During the week the MV set would run as a standby but at weekends the EE set would take over completely with any excess power being sold back into the grid. The changeover was simple. Just wait for the two sets to synchronise and hold then hit the switch. If you didn't wait for the hold they fast set would try to slow down as the slow set tried to catch up. The consequence was that the faster set would almost stall. Rattling buildings and nerves were an added consequence. In fact the whole powerhouse would give a shudder and probably its overly robust construction was all that lay between continuance and demolition.
Jim always got it wrong. On hearing the words "Looks about it" all present left the building.
Several sprint records were broken in that era. Eventually we just gave up. If Jim was on the premises at 11p.m. on a Friday you could find the powerhouse staff and electricians in the Miner's Institute.

Then there was Joe ( a different Joe). He drove a Reliant 3 wheeler and worked mostly backshifts - afternoons, nights or late mornings. The reason for this seemed to be Joe's enjoyment of amateur radio, something that would have been of more enjoyment if he had actually been a licensed operator.
As it was he spent large parts of his mornings in magistrates courts or hiding from detector vans. Inevitably he would appear in the shop scrounging round for bits and pieces. We apprentices were willing contributors and Joe was a willing teacher.
He was also in charge of a part of the mine called "Zone 1". This was the winders, powerhouse, boilerhouse, pit top and immediate pit bottom. It was the "plum" zone and every apprentice coveted the possibility of inheriting it as Joe's understudy. Added to which was the kudos of being the acknowledged electronics expert. I got it and almost immediately resigned.
The same day that Jim handed me my certificate as a Class 1 Electrician and my warrant as "Electrician in Charge of a Mine of Coal".

I moved away soon after.

First to Parr then to Speke and later to Derbyshire. Afterwards to many other parts and countries until finally New Zealand. But Sutton, whether Manor, Oak or Junction is where I live, and many like me.

There are many other stories tucked away, of the mine, of the Manor and the people and surroundings. Perhaps I'll revisit it. Perhaps not. Either way, you asked for some reminiscences, so here they are.

As a passing thought, I was saddened by the reduction in status of Sutton Manor and gladdened by the seeming willingness to pull it back together. My recollection is of a tight knit community with a love and tolerance for their neighbours. It was also encouraging to find that the school is now considered one of the best and is getting better.

P.S. I can't leave out the poor apprentice who turned up fresh from poly, nervous as a virgin lamb and waiting for the first tup. The foreman sent him off with a hacksaw to cut off a redundant cable at a signal box down Clock Face way. The lad returned about an hour later with a blackened face, several bits of hacksaw blade and the look of a failed acolyte at a nymphs coming out party.
The foreman said
"What's up, lad?"
"It would seem t'line weren't entirely dead sir"
"Well then, you'll require a docket for another hacksaw blade"