Let Me Take My Sewing Machine

"I often think about the past,
All the years have gone so fast;
The kindly neighbours all close-knit,
In the streets around the pit.

The colliery green, piled high with logs,
The pit pond that was full of frogs,
The wooden mangle, the big coal pail,
The tin bath hanging from a nail."

'Let Me Take My Sewing Machine' is a collection of poems written by Lorna Prudhoe (1930-2015), who lived her whole life in the town of Washington in the north-east of England. From the humour of 'Baking Day' and 'Small Outsize', to the nostalgia of 'Usworth Colliery' and 'Childhood At The Flat Tops' and the bitter-sweet 'Someday' and 'If Ever', the poems paint vivid pictures of life in a close-knit mining community, the kind of community many still remember fondly and others can only imagine. This collection helps to bring such images to life.

"Before the Washingtons crossed the sea,
Where George chopped down the cherry tree,
The Old Hall's there for all to see,
It has a place in history."

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