This Saturday marks one of the nation’s grimmest anniversaries. It has been 30 years since the King’s Cross fire in London. On 18 November 1987 at 7.30pm, a horrendous blaze broke out at the underground station serving King’s Cross and St Pancras stations: 31 people were killed and 100 injured. This tragedy is marked by a tiny plaque in the station, at the top of the escalators. I often pass it on my way to work. It’s an especially sombre memory in the light of the Grenfell Tower fire this year, which caused an estimated 80 deaths and 70 injuries – incredibly, an exact figure has not been arrived at even now.
After the King’s Cross fire, a public inquiry was efficiently convened and concluded in 91 days. The Grenfell inquiry is set to drag on far longer. The 1987 inquiry noted that, though smoking had been banned in tube trains, people could still smoke on the way in and out. A discarded cigarette on the escalator almost certainly caused the disaster. So smoking was banned throughout stations and, crucially, flammable wooden panelling on escalators had to be replaced.
Smoking wasn’t the issue with Grenfell, but as for the suspect panelling? It is reportedly being examined on other buildings elsewhere, and in some cases removed. But there is no clear assessment of how widespread the panelling is or what the timetable is for any systematic examination and replacement. It appears the lessons of King’s Cross haven’t been learned.
Don’t blame the millennials
I have begun reading Malcolm Harris’s book Kids These Days, about that most sneered-at of demographics: the “millennials”. Harris argues that they are not a bunch of lazy and hysterical snowflakes but an intensely educated and hardworking generation who are not getting anything like the material rewards their parents and grandparents took for granted.
The word millennial has become drenched in dishonest middle-aged thinking, used by people who appear to think they have found someone new to patronise. Take any sentence with the word “millennial” in and replace it with “young people” – and you’ll see how it’s the same grumpy old buffers who used to tell youngsters to get their hair cut and do some national service.
The trendy youth tag before this was “Generation X” in the 90s, taken from the Douglas Coupland novel. They were the post-boomers, the alienated MTV generation, doomed to pointless McJobs (which aren’t bad compared with the millennials’ unpaid internships). But the Gen X generation grew up, shifted to the right, and started condescending to the “millennials”.
Bring back chipped mugs
According to widespread reports, no self-respecting person in a coffee shop orders anything other than a “cold brew” coffee. This is coffee made by mixing the ground coffee in cold water. You drink it at room temperature, and you can also get a “nitro cold brew” which is pressurised with nitrogen gas so it is creamy and foamy, like Guinness.
Drinking coffee cold is an acquired taste. I remember the first time I drank beer or Coca-Cola at room temperature and realised the truth about what these liquids actually taste like. As for cold coffee, it may well go the way of “iced tea”, which generally has loads of artificial peach or lemon flavour.
I want a hipster coffee shop that reproduces the home hospitality experience, offering instant coffee in a hot chipped mug, which they give to you so that you can’t take it by the handle and must politely suppress pain-filled screams as you look for a surface on which to put it down.
• Peter Bradshaw is the Guardian’s film critic
