I would be interested to see how the current generation of CSM students cope with such things. The British ex-pats, Australians and South Africans in their mid-20s, drop-outs from NCB courses, and other odds and sods who made up a fair section of the student body in my day are long gone.
Likewise that a high proportion of British students then had varying experience of casual work in the local mines, in the gypsum or salt sectors, the Peak District quarries, roughnecking on drilling rigs or other such experience.
For that matter, Ron Hooper still taught the use of the miners' dial, vernier theodolite and a few other such hippogriffs, although even then your chances of seeing one in use were pretty slim ( although mechanical theodolites were still the norm and taping in catenary still done on occasions. You'd probably have to go to Boulby or some such gassy mine to see it now. )
''the stopes soared beyond the range of our caplamps' - David Bick...... How times change .... oh, I don't know, I've still got a lamp like that.