When I was a kid, my geographic frame of reference was resolutely set to the west and the south. As a family, we looked towards Nottingham, London, and later Birmingham. It was only when we got a newcomer to my junior school in 1973-4 that I looked north for the first time in my life.
Pierre, the said newcomer, formed a very close friendship with me - probably based on us being two of the geekiest children you could ever hope to meet and he tolerated my extremely accident-prone nature (two self-inflicted black eyes in a year, anybody?) and general wussiness very well.
One day during a school holiday, he invited Michael Lappage and myself up to his old stamping ground (he'd moved from Rotherham), and so we went to Sheffield station for a leisurely few hours logging the locomotives of the Midland Region ("Ooh, look! Another class 45 "Peak"!") while his mum visited relatives in the area. Sure, it was sad, but hey: Pierre now likes Girls Aloud and I've taken up the ukulele.
Nothing changes, then.
Anyway: getting to Sheffield Midland station necessitated traversing the Tinsley Viaduct, and the area it spanned was like nothing I had seen in my life. To one side, fire-belching, hell-hole steel mills, and, to the other, two of the most enormous cooling towers topping off the power station supplying the electricity for this Dantean nightmare. I don't mind admitting the sight scared me and impressed me all at once, and I suppose that marked the beginning of my ambivalent relationship with industrial Yorkshire that has lasted to this day, with me moving up here, moving away twice and coming back each time.
Anyway: getting to Sheffield Midland station necessitated traversing the Tinsley Viaduct, and the area it spanned was like nothing I had seen in my life. To one side, fire-belching, hell-hole steel mills, and, to the other, two of the most enormous cooling towers topping off the power station supplying the electricity for this Dantean nightmare. I don't mind admitting the sight scared me and impressed me all at once, and I suppose that marked the beginning of my ambivalent relationship with industrial Yorkshire that has lasted to this day, with me moving up here, moving away twice and coming back each time.
The steel mills have now mostly gone, and those few that remain have cleaned up their act. A mammoth shopping centre covers the site now, and I don't know what scares me more: but the towers remained.
Until yesterday that is, when they were felled in a controlled explosion, and so my first link with South Yorkshire, dating back to when I was 9, has now gone.
Watch the giants being felled here.
