Things You Don’t Talk About [Narrated]

Sometimes it’s a song that takes you back. Other times, it’s a photograph — a smile in a black-and-white still, a yellowing pools coupon folded in the middle.

This isn’t a memory I grew up with. It came to me sideways, pieced together from what wasn’t said, what was nearly lost. But once it found me, I couldn’t let it go.

Still from the newsreel — my dad is third from the left.

Things You Don’t Talk About

My dad used to rattle off his share of the winnings like it was part of his birth certificate: £18,759, seven shillings and sixpence. Not boastful — just exact. Like muscle memory. Like it still amazed him.

In 1952, four miners from Glapwell Colliery split a world-record football pools win: £75,037 and ten shillings. My dad was one of them. There’s a British Film Institute (BFI) listing for the newsreel — grainy black-and-white footage that played in cinemas across Britain — but I’ve never been able to track it down, and believe me, I’ve tried. What I do have is a photo album of stills from the film. Each of the men was given one. My dad's copy sits in my desk drawer. I open it more than I admit.

At the time, my parents were living in the small rented house my mum had grown up in — a two-up, two-down with coal fires, no hot water, and communal outhouses shared between the run-down terraces. Once a week, they’d heat water on the stove for the tin bath, taking turns in the same water. They’d been married for four years and had their names on the list for a council house. It wasn’t just space they lacked — it was air.

That same house had once held her father, who returned from the trenches gassed in the First World War and later broke his back in a mining accident. He spent the rest of his life in that front room — bedbound, with a hole in his back that never properly healed. My mum was seven. My grandmother became the breadwinner, running the canteen at the Clay Cross Foundry. My mum, though clever, left school at fourteen to help.

So when the win came, it wasn’t just money. It was reprieve. A door opened that had always been closed.

They had a four-bedroom house built for them, spending more than most did at the time, but with good reason. The plot my mum had her heart set on sat above an active coal seam. My dad consulted local mining engineers, who advised that if they built there, they should do so on a six-foot concrete raft. It added about 20% to the cost of the build. They did it anyway.

A few years later, the local pit began working the seam directly beneath the house. The blasts echoed through the floor — dull, regular thuds — and slowly, the house began to tilt. It eventually settled again, more or less. Other houses nearby weren’t as lucky. Like stitching up a wound, the one across the road had to be held together with a steel rod.

Of their £18,759, seven shillings and sixpence, my parents spent nearly a third on that house. They bought a small place for my grandmother nearby in Hasland. They gave each of my mum’s three siblings £1,000 — a sizable amount, when you could buy a semi-detached house for about £1,500.

All four miners said the win wouldn’t change them. They’d stay in the pits. And for a time, they did.

Then, two years later, lightning struck again.

By then, my parents had moved into their new home. My middle brother John had been born. They still played the pools every week — same syndicate, same routines — but my mum and Mrs. Elvin, wife of a newer member, had begun to think it was a waste of money. They nagged. The men relented. They dropped out.

That weekend, the syndicate won again.

There were four winners the second time, so the syndicate's share wasn’t quite as dramatic — around £20,000. Still, another small fortune. Vernons, the pools company, turned it into an event: a trip to London, a stay at the Dorchester Hotel, a party with British celebrities in attendance — David Nixon, Terry-Thomas. My parents were invited along, even though they weren’t among the winners this time. There was another newsreel, and another album of stills. My brother treasures that one.

There’s a photo I love from that second album. Terry-Thomas — gap-toothed, grinning — is in bed, propped up like a king, with all four of the miners’ wives around him. All five of them were smiling, like they’d known each other forever. The next photo shows him balancing a chamber pot like a crown, playing the fool.

I imagine my mother laughing harder than she had in months. That flash of absurdity suspended in celluloid — something she never spoke of again. Even if the win wasn’t theirs this time, the moment still was.

After that, her mind was made up: it was time for my dad to leave the mines.

They’d both grown up around it — seen what it did. Her father. Her brothers. Health never lasted long in families like theirs. The thought of my dad going the same way — she couldn’t let it happen. Especially with two small children and a house they'd built from the ground up.

My dad had left school at 14 — another bright lad, another life shaped by duty. As the oldest of five, and with a cruel father who drank too much and spent what little he had on his fancy woman at the other side of town, he’d been called on to provide. Mining was all he’d known. But I like to think my mum asked him, just once, what he wanted. And I think he let himself answer.

They bought a shop. A corner store in Hasland. Modest, but theirs. He came alive behind the counter — chatting, solving problems, remembering names. For him, being around people was like plugging into the mains. I’d say he chose wisely.

And they were smart. Practical. They still had money put away.

Or so they thought.

It turned out they’d been caught up in a local investment scam. Their accountant — a man who promised to grow their savings — gave them confident updates, listed shares they supposedly owned. Everything looked promising — until one day, he disappeared. And with him, the last of their savings.

They never got it back. But by then, they'd learned how to carry on. You always did.

I didn’t know any of this as a child. Not the pools win. Not the shop. Not the second syndicate or the vanished savings. My parents didn’t talk about it. Not to us. I found out the way seven-year-olds usually find things out: by accident, and by not doing what I was told.

I’d been swinging on the back legs of a school chair, showing off, and fell backwards. The cast iron radiator broke my fall — and the back of my head. After a rush to A&E, a few stitches, and a turban of gauze wrapped around my skull, I was parked at home to recover. Bored. Curious. Slightly concussed. No one noticed when I started poking around in the bottom drawer of the sideboard.

That’s where I found it — tucked beside the best cutlery, in among the off-limits things. A yellowing football pools coupon. What caught my eye was the blurb down the side: something about four Derbyshire miners winning a world record payout. There were grainy little headshots along the bottom — each winner with his wife.

And there, in one of them, were my parents. Looking proud. Young. Impossible.

I don’t know why I didn’t ask them about it. Maybe I already knew it was one of those stories you weren’t meant to hear from a drawer. So I kept it to myself. I tucked it away — the memory of finding it — for another five years, at least.

I was twelve when it finally came up. One Sunday morning, the phone rang. My godmother, Auntie Ivy, was calling to speak to my dad. Her mother-in-law — well into her eighties — had just learned she’d won the pools. £300,000. A staggering sum.

Auntie Ivy was calling for advice.

After the short call, she and Uncle George (my godfather) came over. While we waited, my parents talked around it, as if in code — careful not to say aloud why they were being asked for help. I listened from the sofa. Then, quite calmly, I said something about them having experience with such matters.

They looked at me — confused. How did you know? I told them I’d seen the coupon. Years ago. I hadn’t said anything because, well… I didn’t think it was something we talked about.

The advice they gave Auntie Ivy was simple: “Don’t let anyone else make a story out of you.”

Back then, football pools coupons had a small checkbox — a preference for anonymity. When my parents won, that box had been checked . But the company pressured them relentlessly: it was a “feel-good story,” they said, one that “gave people hope”, they said. Eventually, worn down, everyone agreed to go public.

My parents always regretted saying yes. Not because of the cameras. Because after that, the story never quite belonged to them again.