Old Cliffie has never forgotten those words, which headlined a newspaper story he wrote many years ago. He was young Cliffie then, fresh out of school, with all the confident innocence and certainty about life that all young people have.
He was sitting in the reporters' room one morning, feet on the desk, drinking from a cracked cup and pretending to be a hotshot newshound, when the telex printer in the corner clattered into life with breaking news of an accident at a nearby coalmine.
Half an hour later the grizzled sub-editor, who had learned his job way back in the harsh days of the 1930s, handed young Cliffie a piece of paper with a name and an address and gruffly ordered: 'One of the victims, get round there, we need a story and a picture, on my desk by three o'clock'.
Young Cliffie found the address in a row of grim, 19th-century colliery houses. The wife was upstairs, being comforted by neighbours. The son, also a miner, silently handed over a photograph of his father. The daughter rocked gently on the settee and kept repeating softly, 'But it's my birthday today, but it's my birthday today.'
Young Cliffie had his story filed in time for the evening edition. But he lost some of his innocence and certainty about life that day.
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