I spent the summer of '82 as a trainee at the National Coal Board. Three thousand feet underground at Grimethorpe Colliery. Riding coal conveyor belts face-down. Shoveling slag. Wearing a bright yellow hard hat in a sea of white.

It was a world already disappearing, though none of us knew it yet. Two years later, the miners' strikes would begin. By 2015, every pit in Britain had closed.

I've spent forty years in the games industry, and this summer had nothing to do with that. Except, perhaps, for my first job porting a little game called Manic Miner. But that's a story for another chapter.

Chapter 3 of my serialized memoir is now live. Down t'pit."

https://stevewetherill.substack.com/p/chapter-3-down-tpit

#GameDev #RetroGaming #Memoir #Yorkshire #Barnsley #CoalMining

Chapter 3: Down t'Pit

Shoveling slag, eating pig lips, and a theft.

Steve Wetherill
@stevewetherill
I would have been crap down mines. I suffer from mild claustrophobia and it still takes a miner (sic) effort for me to use a lift on normal life.
My block of flats has a lift and I usually walk down as I am only a couple of stories up. I will even carry my bike down on occasion but I will always take the bike in the lift going up.
@raymierussell I would have been crap down mines too, in all honesty. I had to walk with a stoop a lot of the time, and shoveling muck wasn't for me. I mean, I wasn't going for a miner job per se, and I am sure I did learn something from the experience, but it was a hard life.