Background picture

I was asked by a friend what the picture was which I use for the background of this blog, so I thought I would share the whole image. I cropped it in order to draw attention to the faces.

There is a long passsageway which leads from the "Dry" (the locker and shower room) to the pit-head lift which used to take the miners underground. The Dry itself is a very nostalgic place to be, especially if there are no other visitors present, and there are many lockers left as they were when the mine closed. You truly then get a sense of the lives that were lived in what was then a very closed community, both from geographical isolation and from a lack of comprehension from the outside world.

The passageway and the area just around the corner which was used to wash mining grime from boots are lined by photographs of the men who worked here in the last days of Geevor. Some of these men still work here now as guides. As I walked down the passageway I thought to turn round, and it seemed fitting to record this image of  "looking back", figuratively as well as literally.

As the whole building is stained with red dust from the prolific iron ochres in the earth, it seemed an appropriate image to use for the blog. Many red hues are also derived from tin compounds, although (listen up, factet coming up!) cassiterite (tin ore) , if scratched on an unglazed clay surface, produces a white line due to the presence of tin, despite being blackish to graphite coloured. Which is where the Cornish flag derives from- white tin (often called white metal) crosses black earth (the native cassiterite). Cool eh?

ps I've just randomly remembered that the periodic symbol for tin is Sn (Stannate) which obviously has nothing in common with cassiterite- will research and get back to you on that one, especially as there seems to be some confusion in the Cornish language between tin and donkeys...more on that on later...