MY great-grandad was a County Durham pitman who would often spend his day off walking the two miles from home to engage in a fist fight with the local blacksmith.

I suppose his pre-arranged scrap was regarded a bit of light relief after days spent howking coal underground. It is what we might nowadays call finding a work/life balance.

Earlier this year after watching an episode of the BBC’s genealogy programme Who Do You Think You Are? I delved into my own family history. The researchers behind that TV show have knack for unearthing some incredible stories whereupon it transpires a B-list celebrity can trace their roots back to Cromwell or a minor royal. 

The clamber around my own family tree yielded no such glamour.

On old census records in the column marked ‘occupation’ the words that regularly appeared alongside male family members were either mineworker, hewer (someone who’d loosen coal with a pick) or labourer.

Like most people in this area coal helped shape our family. That might be why I've been emotional at Durham Big Meeting, though that could also have been something to do with a cocktail of beer, Benn (the elder) and brass bands. 

The truth is I couldn’t stand a day down a pit. A trip down Beamish Museum drift made me feel claustrophobic. I have a love/hate relationship with coal. 
I feel angry that so many mineworkers died young, which makes the story on page 3 of Anthony Greathead, a pitman of 50 years who is celebrating his 100th birthday, so remarkable.

Too many lives were lost or wasted in the industry that fuelled a revolution and an empire. The shameful way in which miners were treated by the Thatcher government still makes my blood boil. 

Nevertheless I will feel a pang of sadness on Friday when the last deep coal mine in Britain closes. In its heyday, coal employed more than a million British workers. At the start of the last century, 100,000 men worked the Durham coalfield’s 200 deep shaft mines. For anyone remotely interested in the story of British industry, coal is key and I can’t help feeling that when the last shift comes to the surface at Kellingley Colliery the country will have lost a part of its of identity and purpose. 

Tees steelmaking died this year and now our indigenous coal industry is down to a few surface mines. Instead of hitting a blacksmith I can vent my frustration on a few column inches. You might call that progress. 

Follow me on Twitter @bizecho