GOT Greensman

It cracks me up how I keep running into Game of Thrones people. Today I was in an all-day class that was partly about employment opportunities for postgraduates and partly about researching and writing a dissertation. The panel of speakers included a greensman. He had long black hair, a long beard, a knit cap and he was once a drama student at Queen's specializing in set design. For five years, he's been a GOT greensman, which he described as part agriculture, part set design. He said he loves his job.

The most fascinating part of the day was a 90-minute spellbinding lecture by Phil Scraton, who almost singlehandedly obtained justice for the families and survivors of the Hillsborough tragedy. In 1989, 96 people, many of them teenagers, were crushed to death at a football match. The police rigged a story that blamed the victims and survivors ("drunken hooligans"). The coverup withstood years of inquiries and lawsuits. It has only recently come undone, thanks to Scraton's relentless pursuit of justice. He's a law professor at Queen's and an amazing person. His book is currently banned in the U.K. because a new inquest into the deaths has been ordered (the ones done after the tragedy were a sham). If the inquest leads to prosecutions, the book could prejudice potential jurors. An ESPN documentary that was up for an Emmy this year is also banned here. His book is, however, legal in the U.S.
11-21