PEBBLE

Had to get up early as I was expecting some parcels to be re-delivered by Royal Mail.  They didn't arrive until 11.30am.  Too late to pop back to bed for a while.  Just sat in front of the TV and caught up with another episode of Peaky Blinders.

Later on I got the bus to Newcastle to go to the Apple shop for
the " Basics: iPad " session. There were three of us for the session.  I did learn a  bit but not as much as I would have liked.  The other two ( oldies ) seemed to have had their iPads for a while so when they Apple guy asked if they had any questions they were able to ask him some things which they needed to know.  As far as I was concerned I hadn't really used my iPad at all so I didn't even know what questions to ask.  I did ask about uploading photos to the iPad from my camera and he told me how to do that.  They run sessions which go further into things so if I need any more info I can always go back at a later date..

I did a bit of shopping in Waitrose and Tesco before coming home.

The weather has been very cold today.  The bus I got on to come home had come straight out of the depot and was freezing.  Took me ages to get warmed up this evening. 

The Tiny Tuesday theme word today is DARK. I was struggling to come up with something suitable when I remembered this small pebble with a painting of a pit pony.  As pit ponies worked in the dark down in the pits I thought it might be appropriate.

A pit pony was a class of pony commonly used underground in mines from the mid-18th until the mid-20th century.  The first known recorded use of ponies underground in Great Britain was in the Durham coalfield in 1750. At the peak of this practice in 1913, there were 70,000 ponies underground in Britain. In later years, mechanical haulage was quickly introduced on the main underground roads replacing the pony hauls, and ponies tended to be confined to the shorter runs from coal face to main road (known in North East England as "putting") which were more difficult to mechanise.

In shaft mines, ponies were normally stabled underground and fed on a diet with a high proportion of chopped hay and maize, coming to the surface only during the colliery's annual holiday. In slope and drift mines, the stables were usually on the surface near the mine entrance.

Typically the ponies would work an eight-hour shift each day, during which they might haul 30 tons of coal in tubs on the underground mine railway. The average working life of a pit pony was only  3½ years.

Thanks to Thisislife for hosting the challenge.

Steps today - 7,217