Tales From A Harrogate Caravan
Chapter 5 — The Doctor's Gift of Reading
← Karl Swainston / Tales From A Harrogate Caravan
Within the space of a month, I'd studied hard and became quite good – good enough to be invited to the Doctor's house for Sunday lunch!
The Doctor was married to a lovely woman and they had a dog called Kiri.
‘That's a strange name,’ I commented to the Doctor's wife.
‘She's named after the opera singer Kiri Te Kanawa,’ the Doctor added. ‘Do you read, Karl?’
‘No,’ which was the truth, not since I won and burnt the RA Briggs Award in primary school; I had a complete aversion to books.
‘Here, take this book and come to dinner next Sunday and let me know what you think of the book,’ the Doctor's wife offered.
I couldn't decline, and I accepted the book. I wasn't planning to read it and merely threw it on the table when I got home. Literature wasn't my thing, you see. I wanted to be a Grandmaster, and I didn't like books anyway; they were for toffs.
‘Did you read the book, Karl?’ I was asked the next week.
‘No, I didn't.’
‘I give you a book as a gift and you don't even open it? That's not nice, Karl. You come here, share our table for dinner and don't bother to read the gift you're given? Maybe next time, Karl, no excuses would be better.’
I felt offended and vowed on the bus home I'd never go back. But, you see, I liked the Doctor and his wife, and I also loved her cooking, so it wasn’t long before I changed my mind and resolved to read the book.
The next day I read The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.
Sunday came and I was smashing the rattle of their door.
‘Whaoo! You're eager, Karl. What's the urgency?’ the Doctor's wife exclaimed.
‘The book was magnificent!’ I replied.
Thereupon they would give me three books a week to read, but I demanded five. Then, one day, in Scunthorpe, at a chess tournament, I bought a book on my own called Crime and Punishment by this strange sounding Russian man.
The Doctor and his wife accomplished what all the teachers in school had failed to teach me in eleven years: the joy of reading! I have only eternal thanks and supplications to my good friend, the Doctor, and his wife for giving me this gift.
***
Each week was pretty much the same in 255, but things changed after the addiction to chess. Little additions began to appear: a chess table and pieces, which I've already mentioned, books, paints, canvases, and the house took on a kind of poor Bohemian look.
The change wasn't only in the inanimate objects, but in the human ones too. I generally wore a neat skinhead haircut, but somehow left the hair to grow and grow. The Inner Circle Chess Club and the Outer Circle one, too, were going strong by then, and without being compelled to do so, almost all the players sported a sort of San Francisco moustache, which dropped from the top of our lips and down the sides of our mouths like the letter 'n'. To an outsider we must have looked a right crew of gays, but we weren't, and we weren't bothered either, as we had the characters to cope with it.
In winter, at night, there'd regularly be six or seven of these strange creatures with their moustaches huddled around a chess board in the kitchen of 255. To keep the kitchen warm, the oven door was left open, and a knife had been deftly placed in the meter to stop the ticker. I can still hear that regular click even now, and a more striking memory was, after a heavy fall of snow, noticing that only our house didn't have any snow on it, as there was that much heat being banged out of the free gas appliances.
Yes, 255. I don't miss the hovel, but I do remember with fondness my youth there.
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About Karl Swainston
Karl Swainston is a writer and storyteller whose work is forged from a life lived across the North of England and far beyond. Growing up on a Leeds council estate in the 1960s, Karl's journey was anything but linear. By the age of thirty, he had already lived a dozen lives: from the rigors of grammar school to a degree in Latin, a stint as a fishmonger, a period of discovery living in Marseille, and a return to the hustle of London. Whether working as a postman, a builder, or competing as a county-level chess player, he was, above all, an avid reader—constantly documenting the world around him. This restless spirit continued into his professional life. Karl later taught in Bradford, where he ran a specialist unit for 244 of the most excluded students from across the region—young people whom even the local Pupil Referral Units could not accommodate. Working alongside his old friend Malcolm, Karl spent his days navigating the volatility of Bradford's most aggressive and dysfunctional teenagers. Throughout his life, Karl has been an avid runner and has always shared his home with a rotating cast of beloved dogs and cats—companions who have been constant witnesses to his work. As a writer, Karl's range is as expansive as his history. He works across a wide breadth of genres, including fiction and short stories, autobiography and memoir, biography, non-fiction, and metaphysical writing, as well as providing sharp commentary, opinion, analysis, and essays. Whether writing about his years managing the Harrogate Arms or offering insights from his current adopted home in South East India, where he lives in a simple village with his dog, Bambi, Karl's voice reflects the full, untidy, and deeply human breadth of life. He continues to draw on the rich, decades-long tapestry of his experiences to tell stories that matter, proving that no matter where you live, the human story remains the same.
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