The Significance of Coal

Another year almost gone. Hard to believe it really. What with all the flooding, the continuing changes in the Middle East, economic gloom in Europe and the US plus that ongoing BBC thing. Hard to make sense of it all really. Mind you my cats don't really care, or if they do they certainly don't let on.
Cats have no sense of history and why should they really. If they had they would have reminded me that coal is a fossil fuel, created when dead plant matter is converted into peat, which in turn is converted into lignite, then sub-bituminous coal, after that bituminous coal.
My parents used the stuff. Open fires, tinkers tartan and the coal house outside the back door beside the washhouse. Gasworks, coalmen and coal hammers. Hogmanay present, a gift of fuel for the fire along with a wee dram and a lucky piper. Mind you, my mum's poodle hated the pipes.
Then along came a lady who saw coal as a threat, but that's another tale.
Happy 2013 when it comes and mind the gap.