I’m glad I’m not a miner.

So, I just got back from a trip to Wales and a five-hour caving expedition into an old slate mine. It was called Go Below. It was an awesome adventure, with a zip wire, abseiling, underground rafting, small tunnels, tricky climbs and a fascinating insight into lives we will never experience.

The life of a mining family.

It is not for the faint hearted, and not a life I would like to live.

In brief, a section of the mine was dug by a particular family, the males, that is. Life was harsh, hard work and literally fatal. Many of the men died by the time they were in their forties, mostly from silicosis due to inhalation of the silica dust. Others were crushed by falling rocks, fell to their deaths, were killed by machinery, or drowned.

Boys from the age of ten moved the fridge-freezer sized blocks of slate, via the carts, out of the mine, and they lit the fuses for the explosive used to split the rocks. The men left the mine before the fuses were lit, because losing the head of the family meant the cottage was also lost and the family would have no home and no income.

Women were considered bad luck if they entered the mine. I don’t even know where to start with how I feel about that ridiculous idea!

The work itself was repetitive and back-breaking, pounding a hand-drill for six plus hours a day, six and a half days a week. Wow! For a meagre existence, where the mine owners charged over the odds for candles and tools and even made the workers pay to get the tools sharpened. Madness.

Can you imagine an employer today giving you a job, then telling you to buy your own car, Mac and phone, but charging an inflated price for them.

And when technology improved to make the job of mining faster, the mine owners were all over it. Even though many of the new techniques came at a cost…the lives of the workers. Bollocks to health and safety in those days.

Yet, and this amazed me, miners were proud of their jobs and grateful for the security it gave them. Work which was all year round and came with a cottage to raise a family in. The other work on offer was farm work, seasonal and inconsistent, with only a barn for lodgings.

Miners liked their jobs and were grateful for their lives.

From my world view, it looks like slave labour, a terrible way to spend their precious and limited time on this earth. I wouldn’t want to do it.

And this got me thinking even more. Aren’t I lucky? Lucky to be raised in a country and a society and a time where I can make different choices for my life, where there is a multitude of jobs out there if I want to work hard and strive for them. Where, as a woman, I can live independently, earn my own money, own a home, get an education.

I studied at thirty for a degree, at forty for a Master’s. I write and walk and keep fit. I run my home and raise my children surrounded by beautiful countryside. And I appreciate those things every day.

When we came home, my son asked me, if I could live in any era and any society, which would it be.

Instinctively, I started to say this one, where I am now.

But then I took a breath and thought…

How does now look for the world, for all the women in it, for the men and for humanity?

Those are big questions, and I cannot give a comprehensive answer, but what I would say is that from a woman’s perspective, I have it good.

I have had access to good education, a democratic society, and the benefits of equality afforded that society by the sacrifice of the women who came before me. I can own a home, have my own bank account, get a divorce, live alone, raise children by myself, and travel around the world unaccompanied.

I am probably the freest a woman has been since the Neolithic period!

Walking through that mine reminded me how quickly we take our lives for granted. The miners were grateful for work that most of us wouldn’t endure for a single day. Their wives were grateful simply to have a roof over their heads.

And here I am, free to choose my own path.

That’s a privilege.

One I hope I never stop appreciating.