take our word for its, an wordy newsletter, covered anthrax/anthracite connection back when anthrax was in the news, and we had a side discussion here, too...
http://www.takeourword.com/current/page1.html
the link is to the current issue, you'll have to search for anthrax.

my grandparents heated their council house with anthracite coal, and i still associate the scent of a coal fire with good things..(i was(am) naturally an early riser, (in a family of slug-a-beds) and the summer we visited my grandparents, I alone was permitted to go to the coal shed and fill the scuttle with coals. (when my mother learned that i thought this a privledge, she sneered... i suspect that she was right, and if the 'privledge' lasted more than a few months, i would have seen it as chore.)

but early each morning, i was up and dressed, and helped my poppa by filling the scuttle with coals, and laying a fire, (and lighting a match and lighting the fire!) what a privledge! Nana had banned all of children from the coal shed, and she was more frightening in her ire than my mother, but while she quitely snored, my grandfather urged me to disobey her.(how could i not love him!)


my other obsession