Well I was born into a woolen mill family my great, great grandfather founded. My mother and her three brothers ran the mill. My grandfather ran away with a mill girl so my visits to him were not frequent. So that's who I take after!!! My father started life as a pit boy hauling coal at 6 years old deep down in the coal mines of Yorkshire. He missed out on schooling but taught himself while walking the moors and worked his way up into a good insurance job.
My mother worked hard running the mill office and my father was away most of the time selling or collecting insurance premiums. One of the original 'man from the Pru' guys on the doorstep to collect a penny per policy. So I was bounced about from aunt to uncle to grandfather and my dragon like grandmother. Being a mill owners grandson I always had shoes instead of clogs and travelled in cars and not by pedal bike or foot. So I was privileged.
Many nuggets of wisdom were given to me and some stuck. The most poignant from my grandfather and my grandmother (who lived with us for 25 years. My father was a very patient man).
The ones that stuck were as follows:
Waste not want not
There nowt so queer as folk (famous line in The Full Monty)
Truth nivver urt any-one
Where there's muck there's brass
Put wood in oil (shut the door) or you'll end up on Ilkley moor
Never leave the table empty handed
Yer right low (grandmother to me when I became a rocker and went out with tarts)
My grandfather forever told me not to listen to my mother when talking about the mill workers. ( my mother was a snob. My father wasn't. He'd worked the mines) They work hard and maybe harder than the mill managers and as such were to be treated as equal. Many the time my mother gave me a bollocking cause I was sat (aged 5) with the workers sharing dripping sarnies from their snap tins and joining in the banter. In fact as soon as I could walk I spent more time wandering round the mill covered in oil and fluff amidst the clatter of the spinning jennies and looms.
This advice stayed with me for life. Later when going to boarding school and my time working with governments I'd meet the so called 'high and mighty' and think to myself 'I'm as good if not better than them'
James D had nothing on me. I was the original rebel without a cause and sometimes I still am. Hence degrees in Bullshit and Dumb Insolence 
Anyway, I digress. I'm giving away the substance of a book I am writing.
SM 
mate. Fond memories for me and now and again it brings me down to earth with a bump when I climb off my high horse and think on't
