What type of coke would you immediately think of here?

[AgonyAgatha]

Reading an old childhood favourite to my kids. Come across this passage. My first thought was coca cola. Then they mentioned coke dust and I was a bit confused...🤔What kind of a side business has this council got going on behind their village hall anyway? 😂

Only once the kids had gone to bed did it click that it probably means coke as in coal? (Right?)

There is no mention of this being set in a mining town at all (though the name of the town is mentioned and is apparently in Leicester (having looked it up!)).

So AIBU for having thought there was some Breaking Bad stuff going on behind the scenes or would it have been common knowledge that there would be a pile of coke behind the village hall back in the 90s?

It amused me for a bit at least

It’s clearly coal 🙄

Coke is an old fashioned name for coal/ cheap coal. Typically used in working class homes.

YABU

Coke is type of coal
...
Em. I'm not sure of the technical difference but it is!

When using the drug there is no dust left over 🤣 imagine enough coke to cover a dog!

Why is a mining town relevant?

Everyone had a coal heap in the 50s, 60s - in their house - shed or cellar
There was a big one at my school- rural primary- no mining with 100 miles

Fair enough. I just thought it was funny. But it wouldn't have been obvious to me as a child either; I didn't know anyone who still used coal.

I grew up in a mining town, so it did make me think coal dust given the context. It might also be a bit generational, as miners and coal are still in living memory from my childhood.

I'd think of the drug at first!!! But when looking closer at details, it is obviously the coal. 😂

Hence my confusion 😂

Coal but if I was tired (im always tired lately) I would be a bit baffled and confused 😂 but I was thrown off by an empty car park today 😅 (drive a foot out the space because there was no car to line up with)

Because it was written and is set in the 90s - not the 60s. Noone I knew was using coal fires back then. It was all gas or electric.

I think coke was smokeless coal

Yes, I think it's generational. When I was a child (1960s) we had big lumps of coal called coke that were put on the fire. It had to be kept dry, ideally, and it was also quite expensive and was used sparingly, so I would find it weird to have a huge heap of it behind the village hall, but it's obviously what they're referring to.

In Northern Ireland vast majority outside of Belfast still have coal fires/ multi fuel stoves. And coal men still on the go!

Coke is made from coal, it's used for iron smelting, or as a less polluting fuel than coal itself.

I'd immediately be visualising the pile of stuff from cleaning the range and fire at the back wall of my Grandparent's home that I was forbidden from even looking at by my mother. That was usually coal, but it could have been coke, because I also remember her grumbling once that the coal man tried selling Granddad coke and he wasn't having any of it.

It's coal, and there is a town in Leicestershire called Coalville which did used to have a coal mine

I would think in this case, the coke was used for heating the village hall in some sort of solid fuel stove or boiler. My in-laws still had a solid fuel boiler in the 90s.

I was born in the 90s and still knew it was coal! Nothing else makes sense

This ^

I remember my parents ordering 40 bags of coke for our heating stove back in the late 60s. Coal was for the open fire. Coke (I think) burns hotter but cleaner than coal.

I would also be utterly confused 😁 I was born in the 1980s and have never heard of coal being called coke before 🤷‍♀️

I use coal on my open fire have done all winter.

This is the % of homes that had some sort of central heating in the U.K.
It rose quickly in the 1980s and 1990s.