You know those slag heaps that used to be around town, in Brenda Road etc? What was actually in them? Did they pre-date the Steel Works?

No, they were created by the steel works.

When you turn iron ore into steel, slag is the residue.

That's just twenty quid then, thanks.

Oh, I'm not paying. How do I know you're right, anyway?

I'm sure I saw heaps of slags last time i went out on a Friday night

Because I'm always right. Now get your girly purse out.

Limestone is used in blast furnaces as a kind of purifying medium.

The limestone decomposes in the middle zones of the furnace according to the following reaction: CaCO3 → CaO + CO2

The carbon dioxide vents off leaving calcium oxide, which reacts with various acidic impurities in the iron (notably silica) to form slag, which is essentially calcium silicate, CaSiO3.

Next question.

Now that IS worth 20 quid. Do you want it in euros?

Oy Oy OY!!!!

That's what I said!! Ony like the Playschool version.

Yuen will do, about 300 ta!!

...and when they tipped the molten slag, if it hit a pocket of water....you knew about it

My ex Fiancee would be in there Mr Grebec, and no mistake

That depends. How many pints does a twenty buy these days?

Well if you include the duty, the VAT, the Green Tax, the security charge and the fuel surcharge......errmmmm.........

You'll have to put to.....

Well, as I thought I've got the era slightly askew as regards something I'm doing. Thanks for help
This is one I did earlier. You can read it if you like. Or not, as the case may be.


Landscapes

Growing up with slag heaps
gave him an uncommon sense of beauty.
He loved their bulk on the horizon
peaceful as hills;

and in the evenings bronze skies
would stall bed-time, liquid-hot metal roaring
from furnaces, breathing like dragons,
settling against odds
into cool shapes. With never a warning
of the change in focus,
the years on night-shift curtaining vision.
Days and seasons lost identity
and living made him dark,
forsaking of childhood rhythms.

His children grew beyond him,
he disliked his wife. And bitterly he saw,
when all was done, no stone would mourn
the great dead masses of the Works,
when they were razed and landscaped.
Only these alien trees, those tutored flower beds
to purge the molten anger of a life,
snarling far miles from home
into a gentler mantling.

Cautious he steps abroad,
finding what, unseen,
has always pressed the walls of town.
The air breathes softly
releasing the dry heat of recent summer.
He gazes over purple sweeps of moor
where only sheep live.
In valleys, falling leaves
gently besiege villages,
and wintering birds circle
half-clothed trees. Unseeing,
he sniffs wood-smoke, rustles underfoot
crisp foliage, stops to test
bark of birch and oak.

In the last late streaks of darkening sun,
he climbs a ridge,
his slow form silhouetting against twilight.
An old vagrant breeze
slinks at his collar.
Details merge and darken.
Hilly shapes become familiar.

Thank you

Marvellous.

This thread just makes me think of Aberfan.

The younger ones on here probably won't know what I an talking about

Is that that place in Wales where a coal heap collapsed over a school?

Thats the one, about 3 months after the '66 World Cup Final. 144 died, including 116 kids aged between 7 and 10 in the school. They had just been singing "All things bright and beautiful" in the school hall assembly, and then went to their classes, if they had stayed in the hall for a bit longer, on the opposite side of the school, a lot of them would probably have survived.