Explaining coal to people who've never seen it

I gave a talk today about the regeneration of Chatterley Whitfield to a class of 15 year old pupils at Sandon High School. It was part of the work that Groundwork is doing with local schools about the former colliery, using funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

I'd prepared a presentation based around a list of questions I was going to use to encourage their involvement, but they beat me to it by giving me a list of their questions when I arrived.

It wasn't as long as the list of 34 questions they gave Jim, Geoff and Roy when they went to talk about what it was like to be a coal miner, but then urban regeneration, without physical progress on site to make it real and relevant, isn't nearly as interesting as stories of danger and camaraderie.

All in all, I'm impressed that they listened for as long as they did. The pupils will give a presentation of their own on 9th December about Chatterley Whitfield, and I'm looking forward to it.