Scardale: A Short Story

By Karl Swainston

Scardale is set in a mining village in the county of Yorkshire. Elsie Davey is the last inhabitant of Scardale. She befriends a young reporter, Lucy, and begins to tell her the tale of a few of the village’s characters from time past. There is the story of the shameless Ronnie Hardaker and his suffering wife, Mary. There is the trip to Scarborough and the even more shameless story of Ethel, Edna, and the colourful character of Daisy Doodeck.
Scardale is entertaining short story from start to finish.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Karl Swainston
• Release date: Mar 3, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370049325

Karl Swainston

Karl lives in a small village outside Goole with his two Chihuahuas, Arthur and Bambi, and a perfectly ugly cat called Audrey. Karl is a keen runner, DIY and SEO enthusiast. Karl is father of two children, Rebecca and Alex, and grandfather to a wonderful granddaughter called Chloe.Karl was born and raised from humble beginnings in South Leeds, poignantly and comically remembered later in life when, as a landlord of a pub in Harrogate, he penned his stark but very funny, Tales from a Harrogate Caravan.After leaving St Thomas Aquinas Grammar School in Leeds, Karl worked as a fishmonger and a postman for a year before moving to London to work within the construction industry for nearly twenty years.In his early and mid-twenties, Karl was a strong county chess player, playing for both Leeds regionally and Yorkshire nationally, a beautiful and charming time, and certainly not dull! Tales from a Harrogate CaravanIn his mid-thirties, Karl returned to education and graduated from Leeds University with an Honour’s Degree in Latin, with additional duly electives in Russian and English classical literature.In the next year Karl successfully undertook a PGCE and became a secondary school teacher, specialising in working with students with complex behavioural issues; sometimes a difficult profession, but one with many memorable and funny moments.Karl’s published literary writings are panoramic, covering genres from fiction, metaphysical, psychological, philosophical, supernatural, spiritual, physical, health, to business and construction. His books include Murder and the Devil, A Quantum Way of Life, Scardale, A Metaphysical Journey, and Tales from a Harrogate Caravan. Karl has also written various home improvement guides. Recently, Karl’s literature was translated into Portuguese and published.Karl now writes full-time. He is currently writing both fiction and non-fiction, and he is also writing various articles for different websites.If you wish to read more on the varied writings of Karl Swainston, then visit:Amazonhttps://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=karl+swainston&ref=nb_sb_nossorSmashwordshttps://www.smashwords.com/books/search?query=Karl+Swainston

Book preview

SCARDALE

A Short Story

by

Karl Swainston

SCARDALE

‘Lucy, it’s 30 years since the great miners’ strike of 1984, but I doubt whether the younger generation even know of such an historic even; and let’s not forget our southern population, too, as they rarely cared a toss for it at the time, but enough of that. I’ve just had a telephone about some old woman in some village up in Yorkshire, who won’t move, and whom the council are going to evict in the coming days. What’s her name again?’ the Standard’s editor pondered. ‘Elsie, that’s right, Elsie Davey, 102 years old. She’s the last person left living in the small mining village of Scardale. I want you, Lucy, with your womanly charm to get up there and interview the old girl. The council will evict her, and I want you to get her story. I don’t just want the story of why she won’t move, I also want the human story behind her, and of the history of her mining village before and after the Strike. It’s a tough one, as she may not speak to you, and we don’t know whether her faculties are all there, too, but I do know she’s lived in the village all her life. There’s a return ticket, there; off you go,’ and with an unceremonious wave of the editor’s hand, I was shown the door, so to speak.

And that was it; I was to journey to Yorkshire immediately on my first reporting assignment. The year was 2014. I was fresh out of university and had landed a minor role as an understudy reporter at Winchester’s only newspaper, the Standard. I had never been to Yorkshire before, only Lancashire and that was grim. Now, here I was, train ticket in hand, heading off to a Yorkshire backwater called Scardale to interview a pensioner called Elsie Davey.

She was 102 and I was 22, I wondered on the train hurtling through the drab fields of Nottingham. She was born in the last century, in the year 1912. She lived through the First World War and the Second World War, and, no doubt, will have some stories to tell of that great event, I thought. I'd studied history for my degree and relished the prospect of hearing the old woman talk to me of real history, as it were. However, although I was eager to meet her, there was also the nagging doubt in my mind that a woman of