This book is all about growing up in the Lancashire wool mill town of Blackburn through the depression and terminal decline of the cotton industry.
It took me several goes to get through this book, it had nothing to do with the quality of the writing or the stories told just I could not relate to them and the author assumed I knew what it felt like to wear clogs or scratchy woollen clothes, to work all day in a noisy fibre filled factory that I presumed smelled of oil and damp.
However half way through this book I paid a visit to a local wool museum and then all this stories came in focus and colour.
I returned home and buried my self back into the book towards the end I loved the book and with any good book it's closure was saying bye to a good friend!
However what I did find very interesting was on page 386..
Goverment aid through the dole seemed to be deliberately aimed at breaking the spirit of anyone who was proud, thrifty, honest and upright. How could anyone 'genuinely seek work' when there was no work to seek; or accept a means test, which seemed designed not only to lower an already low standard of living, but also to break up family life....
Does this all sound familiar? Yet this is referring to the great depression of the 1930's.
I know so many people who can relate to this and its true it seems over the decades the benefit system set up to protect the weak, fails them too!
I would recommend this book but I think you need to have a interest or a link to Lancashire or the cotton / woollen industry to appreciate it to it's fullest.
See:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Road-Nab-End-Lancashire/dp/1906011265
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