Down t'Pit

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 the summer of '82 had nothing to do with any of it. Or almost nothing.

Chapter 3 of my serialized memoir is up over on my Substack. Down t'pit.