Crescent moon and quote on the ribs

The pit siren went at six again this morning and I stood on the back step with my boots unlaced, watching the last of the moon slip behind the slag heap as if it had somewhere better to be. Mam says you cannot see it from the cage anyway, so it doesn't count as seeing. I told her it counts for me.

You asked in your last letter what the men talk about down the shaft. Mostly it is the roof, the price of coal and whose wife has bought a new hat. But Dai Pritchard says the moon is a fine thing to have above you when you come up, only you have to take it as it is. He says it's like Auntie Glenys, sweet as sugar on a Sunday and nobody knows what she's thinking the rest of the week. Part of her was always hidden away, he said, and that's no crime.

I've been drawing it in the margins of my shift book. A thin crescent with a little cloud tucked under its horn, and stars I keep getting wrong because my hand shakes after the cold. Mr Hollis at chapel says I should draw something I can finish, so here is the finished one, folded inside this envelope. Keep it somewhere dry. When you come home at Christmas, bring the good scissors, and we'll cut it out together and hang it in the window where the lamp can reach it.

Your brother, Tom