Tick Tock Tuesday (25 February 2020) – The Miners’ Strike, Brass Band

I thought I’d create a new challenge. It is a challenge primarily for me, because I’m new to this platform, and because you don’t really know me yet, nor I you. As my name suggests, I am recovering from a stroke, and I like to push myself in all kinds of little ways… including getting to know the Wonderful World of WordPress. Although this is something I will be doing, I invite you, if this idea takes your fancy, to play along with me and share with me some of your own selections.

My plan is: each Tuesday, until I run dry, I shall post some piece of art with which I have some connection – which has helped to mould me, which makes me tick. Okay, a piece of art is a bit vague – it might be a piece of music, a movie, a book, a painting, or ???? – so my phrasiology is deliberate. It might be anything – I will play this post by ear, so I’m not sure what I’ll think of each week. And, I’ll keep posting on the theme weekly until I run out of ideas.

My rules? Well, I’m not big on rules! My choice will be something with which I feel a connection. That’ll be the important thing, just having some kind of fleeting affection for something probably won’t be enough, unless I’m using my choice as an example of something bigger.

It will be one choice per week – I’m aware that long posts can be quite onerous to read, and I’m in no hurry to complete this so if I have two ideas, I’ll probably hold the second until the next week.

In that same vein, I’ve created this block as a Reusable Block, which I intend repeating for every post on this theme. The block ends with a full-width separator, so if you want to skip ahead each week it doesn’t really matter.

I probably won’t post any lyrics, or any kind of analysis – if you like my choice, the information will be out there for you. But I will try to briefly explain why I feel a connection to my choice, just to try and enhance readers’ understanding of what makes me tick.

I will tag my posts TTT and I will go looking for other posts with that tag. If you’d like to join in, please do the same, or comment, or pingback to this post, and feel free to reproduce my graphic. Lastly, I look forward to reading about what makes you tick.

I wanted to talk one last time about the UK Miners Strike of 1984/5. Or rather, not the strike itself, but the fallout from it.

One of the traditions of British working life were the communal activities, based around the workplace. One such outlet was the brass band. Many collieries and factories formed associated brass bands, and as the strike ended and th pits closed, these bands largely disappeared. Grimethorpe in south Yorkshire, was onee such colliery, but the band played on – I guess it had a critical mass, having already won national awards. It has since won more, being crowned the National Brass Band Championship in 1992 (which happened at the same time that the pit was closing, and which is dramatised in the movie Brassed Off). It is a feat it has achieved four times in its history.

I happen to like the soothing elegance of the brass band, and the traditional roots are not lost on me. So, the piece I want to showcase today is a wonderful, peaceful hymn by the Grimethorpe Colliery Band – I can also appreciate hymns, though I am not religious – released by the band a couple of years after the pit’s closure, in 1995. Abide With Me.