Selston man's new book tells a tale of corner shops, mining villages, council estates and coal
Like most of the mining village lads who left school in the very early 80s, I assumed that I’d get a job at the pit.
My dad was a miner, I was good with my hands, had a decent set of O-levels from Matthew Holland Comprehensive School in Selston – what could go wrong?
The Miners’ Strike, that’s what.
During my interview at Bentinck Colliery, I was told that engineering apprenticeships were on hold.
Shaking his head, the man interviewing me mentioned Arthur Scargill, Margaret Thatcher and reckoned that “t’ next few years’ll be tough”.
He was right.
In the end, I landed an apprenticeship with a firm in Kirkby then moved to London where I did an assortment of jobs – more engineering, painting and decorating, removals, hospital porter – before blagging my way into journalism.
I was obviously proud of our family’s mining connections, but after my dad died a far-too-early miner’s death and the local pits closed, it was hard to imagine myself as even a tiny part of the East Midlands’ coal dust-covered history.
Then, in 2020, I became a very late first time father at the age of 55.
And I wondered what I was going to tell my son about who he was and where he came from.
Instinctively, I thought about mining. I thought about how much mining had shaped Selston and shaped my life.
About how mining had shaped all of our lives; not just in the East Midlands, but the whole world over.
Dad and at least five generations of our family had lived and died providing fuel for the Industrial Revolution, the electrical revolution, the rail revolution, the motoring revolution, the technological revolution of the 1960s.
Mining allowed men like my dad and villages like Selston to stand shoulder to shoulder with the past.
Mining made sure that men like my dad and villages like Selston mattered.
The few words I started writing for my son turned into a few more and a few more.
And they eventually turned into a book called The Undisputed King of Selston. It’s about me, my mam and dad, but we are little more than characters in a much bigger story about packed-to-the-rafters workingmen’s clubs, coach trips to Skegness, corner shops, mining villages, council estates and coal.
And how the Strike – unfairly blamed on the Nottinghamshire miners – brought that story to a juddering halt.
Yes, I started this book for my young son, but I finished it for my dad, for Selston and for a glorious childhood that was guarded and guided by coal. I finished it in the hope we never forget the East Midlands’ proud mining history.
The Undisputed King of Selston by Danny Scott (published by John Murray and priced at £16.99) is out now.