The Road to Wigan Pier [NOOK Book]

The first sound in the mornings was the clumping of the mill-girls' clogs
down the cobbled street. Earlier than that, I suppose, there were factory
whistles which I was never awake to hear.

My bed was in the right-hand corner on the side nearest the door.
There was another bed across the foot of it and jammed hard against it (it
had to be in that position to allow the door to open) so that I had to
sleep with my legs doubled up; if I straightened them out I kicked the
occupant of the other bed in the small of the back. He was an elderly man
named Mr Reilly, a mechanic of sorts and employed 'on top' at one of the
coal pits. Luckily he had to go to work at five in the morning, so I could
uncoil my legs and have a couple of hours' proper sleep after he was gone.
In the bed opposite there was a Scotch miner who had been injured in a pit
accident (a huge chunk of stone pinned him to the ground and it was a
couple of hours before they could lever it off), and had received five
hundred pounds compensation. He was a big handsome man of forty, with
grizzled hair and a clipped moustache, more like a sergeant-major than a
miner, and he would lie in bed till late in the day, smoking a short pipe.
The other bed was occupied by a succession of commercial travellers,
newspaper-canvassers, and hire-purchase touts who generally stayed for a
couple of nights. It was a double bed and much the best in the room. I had
slept in it myself my first night there, but had been manoeuvred out of it
to make room for another lodger. I believe all newcomers spent their first
night in the double bed, which was used, so to speak, as bait. All the
windows were kept tight shut, with a red sandbag jammed in the bottom, and
in the morning the room stank like a ferret's cage. You did not notice it
when you got up, but if you went out of the room and came back, the smell
hit you in the face with a smack.

I never discovered how many bedrooms the house contained, but strange
to say there was a bathroom, dating from before the Brookers' time.
Downstairs there was the usual kitchen living-room with its huge open range
burning night and day. It was lighted only by a skylight, for on one side
of it was the shop and on the other the larder, which opened into some dark
subterranean place where the tripe was stored. Partly blocking the door of
the larder there was a shapeless sofa upon which Mrs Brooker, our landlady,
lay permanently ill, festooned in grimy blankets. She had a big, pale
yellow, anxious face. No one knew for certain what was the matter with her;
I suspect that her only real trouble was over-eating. In front of the fire
there was almost always a line of damp washing, and in the middle of the
room was the big kitchen table at which the family and all the lodgers ate.
I never saw this table completely uncovered, but I saw its various
wrappings at different times. At the bottom there was a layer of old
newspaper stained by Worcester Sauce; above that a sheet of sticky white
oil-cloth; above that a green serge cloth; above that a coarse linen cloth,
never changed and seldom taken off. Generally the crumbs from breakfast
were still on the table at supper. I used to get to know individual crumbs
by sight and watch their progress up and down the table from day to day.