This emotion was partly down to the sights and sounds of a labouring, gear crashing flat back lorry as it crawled its way down the residential cul de sac laden in a methodical way with stacked and overlapping sacks of coal but mainly as we thought that the character of our attentions was the embodiment of the Bogey Man.
You could easily see why, what with the bright whites of his eyes staring out from the soot strewn skin above a good set or pearly teeth amongst demonic red fleshy lips.
His clothing also marked him out as something a bit unworldly.
There was a flat cap, rakishly offset and with streaky stains of perspiration in the tweed thread, heavy trousers with patches sewn on where the abrasion of the coarse sacking had ripped the heavy duty denim, steel toe capped boots which sparked as the metal Blakey shoe protectors did their job and of course the trademark uniform of a leather blouson or as it was more commonly referred to- a jerkin.
A jerkin was a down to earth practical garment giving an almost armoured thickness of animal hide between jagged lumps of coal and the body and yet its tailored shape, even if roughly fashioned by a tailor's shop gave the essential freedom of movement to stretch, twist, heave, lift, support and carry and then eject the contents of the sack into a fuel bunker or shute.
You never saw a new, unblemished jerkin although they must have been at some time. They were standard military issue in the two world wars and so there will have been many finding their way into army surplus stores or simply not handed in by the combatants to whom they were given out.
Our coalman had a well matured and deeply hued one which had seen good service for many years and in all weathers. The ex army origin was therefore likely.
The leather had a beautiful patina, almost like a grainy fingerprint in spite of a dusting of fine carbon.
As for warmth and waterproofing qualities, well, there must have been some although not evident from our scrutiny as the blackened figure would sweep by from lorry tailgate and up the driveway to the side of the house. I suspect, looking back, that there was a woollen lining and if the donor of the leather, a cow, can tolerate from drizzle to a torrential downpour in the open meadow then there must have been natural resistance to airborne moisture.
My description so far may have conjured up a monochrome image of a distant past but I am hearkening back to the near history of the late 1960's and early 1970's.
Mine was not a Lowry-esque upbringing amongst dark satanic mills, matchstick men and matchstick cats and dogs but a tidy housing estate with neat semi detached houses in a Suffolk market town.
The deliveries were not of the best quality anthracite, bituminous, lignite or subbituminous coal but the derivative smokeless coking coal or just coke for the Parkray solid fuel fire and back boiler in our living room.
Those delivery days were certainly an event in the street and sadly, long since gone what the convenience, lower cost and infinitely better environmental connotations for natural gas which is piped silently and efficiently directly into our homes.
But what of the classic jerkin?
You could say that the emergence of the gilet or padded sleeveless jacket is the modern equivalent of the jerkin with the emphasis on style, comfort and lightness rather than sheer durability and longevity.
The jerkin is still around but now as a fashion item with some very well crafted and by definition expensive versions available to the market although you would not find one within a few hundred miles of the contents of a mucky old coal scuttle.
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