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 wow, Grimethorpe is a real place? I thought it was made up by Viz comic as home for the evil football team in Billy the Fish.
@IanMoore3000 it is real. Apparently not named that way because of grime, but after a person called Grimey. Or so I think I read somewhere.