Bye bye Steetley part 3, the demolition

Well, it’s all over. the dust has literally settled, there is officially no more steetley Chimney. After many decades overlooking the residents of Hartlepool, its fate was sealed at 11:06AM, and it crashed to the ground in a cloud of black smoke.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have as many cameras covering the event as I anticipated, but I still managed to get these…

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Bye-bye Steetley, part 1

I know I’ve left it a bit late, seeing as there’s less than 12 hours, before this local landmark gets blown up, but I am indeed sad to see the old thing go.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Those of you not from Hartlepool won’t know this place, unless you’ve came into Hartlepool from the north. It’s the big huge chimney that stood next to the tran track, and was surrounded by rubble. After the entire site being a death trap for many years, at 11AM tomorrow, the chimney stack will be demolished. the rest of the site, which has also been flattened over the last few months, will then be covered with crushed stone and a housing estate built on top of it. A sad, undignified end to something which was, for my entire life, such a prominent part of it. For those of you who know Mercuryvapour Towers, you’ll know that the chimney is visible from the front window, which means I saw it at least once a day for my entire 32.5 years of existence (minus holidays and foggy days, naturally).

The question that I keep asking myself is, am I sad to see it go? Some days I’d look out and think “I really wish they’d get rid of that eyesore”, next day I’ll look out and think “I’ll miss it when it’s gone. The end of an era”. Its purpose was to extract magnesia from seawater.

Steetley has had many names over the years. Some readers may remember it as the Pallister works, others simply as “Redland Magnesia”, which was one of the last companies to own it before it closed. I’m pretty sure most of the local area knows of at least one person who worked there.

There are three things that were certain in nearby West View – death, taxes, and the fact that Steetley would kick out its unmistakable stench as soon as your mam put the washing out. The smell was an ungodly mix of chlorine and rotten eggs, and if the wind was coming in off the sea, the entire estate spent the next half-hour gagging. The afore-mentioned Washing would also need to be done again too, as there would be little yellow spots all over it.

Steetley also featured in the very first time I borrowed a camcorder, was Wayne’s. Some of you may, or may not mention Wayne. He was someone who I went to school with for a bit, was really good friends with up until about 2000, and then almost completely disappeared off the face of the planet. Past mentions of him on here, feature a recording of his mam asking Wayne… “Is he still an alco?” More on that, in another post.

Anyway, the very first camcorder I ever borrowed was his. He had an interest in lasers, and we both lived a mile from Steetley, albeit at different angles. One night, he left his camcorder over here, and we talked over ye olde CB radio while he shone the laser pointer onto Steetley to see if I could see it, or if the camcorder would pick it up. The answer was a resounding no. I don’t know why either of us thought it’s be possible to see a dot the size of a pinhead on a structure 1 mile away. Still, I got to use his camcorder for a bit, and yes, I still have the tape I made somewhere. I doubt he still has his copy. In fact I don’t even think he remembers who I am.

The fact that Steetley was also visible from so far away was also another “attraction” for me. As a kid, I made a couple of trips to Roseberry Topping. I always wanted to know if Steetley was visible from there. Unfortunately, each of the days we’d chosen were no good for viewing. It wasn’t until April last year that I confirmed with my own eyes and camera that it was visible – a distance of exactly 14.67 miles.

I had plenty more memories going around in my head, but it’s approaching 2AM. I’m going to get some shots in the morning before it goes…
I have a million other memories and photos to go through,

bash-3.2$ rm -r /gallery/*

Regular viewers will notice that, since February, the gallery has been half the man it used to be, and over the last few days, it’s ended up completely broken. The software itself was first installed in about 2007, and possibly due to constant upgrades, server moves and permission changes,it would appear that it’s became horribly corrupt, therefore I’m starting from scratch with it. I asked Andy the Iridium Fan if there was anything he wanted keeping on there, and he said “You may aswell delete all the photos from the Gallery and start again.”

Therefore, that’s exactly what I’ve done. Emptied the database, and deleted everything. I’ll probably start using it a lot more for my stuff, instead of uploading everything to flickr. It’ll probably be easier.

Watch this space…

Cherry Pepsi

Just a quick one while I remember, just in case you haven’t found it yet Marko, Cherry Pepsi does indeed exist down here, and it’s actually really quite awesome. It’s infinitely better than the awful diet cherry coke, and it’s just as good, if not better, than normal cherry coke….

Oh, and I had another “brush” with the fox at work today…

Oh dear, I’m making vulpine-related puns, this writers’ block must be bad. I’ve always wanted to take a photo of a fox. some of you may have saw the really shitty one I put on facebook, which could have been mistaken for a small dog, Well, this is a slightly better example, albeit still taken with the camera on my mobile. Alas, I don’t think I’m allowed my camera at “new” work.

In other news, by non-drinking is still going well. I did go off the rails slightly on Friday night, I went for a curry, and gave into temptation. Still, 2 pints in 4 weeks is hardly alcoholic standard, and an immense improvement on the shit I used to throw down my neck on a nightly basis. I also played table tennis in Sheffield city centre. Videos may, or may not be forthcoming.