THE SPINNING WHEEL that Sleeping Beauty pricked her finger on arrived in Aberystwyth around the middle of the 17th century. Technically it’s known as the Saxon wheel, though no one ever calls it that. There are four main parts: the wheel, the spindle, the distaff and the foot pedal or ‘treadle’. This is a story about the treadle. Or, more precisely, about that sorry army of girls who pedalled it during the years after the flood. The girls came mainly from the farms up beyond Talybont – chancers who didn’t know a loom from a broom but flocked to the lights of Aberystwyth to make it big modelling on the tops of the fudge boxes they sold to the tourists. They called them treadle trollops but normally they never got to peddle anything except their sweet young bodies down at the Druid speakeasies on Harbour Row. You won’t find much enchantment in this story. And since it all took place in the shadow of Aberystwyth Castle and not the one described by Hans Christian Andersen there aren’t any knights in shining armour. Just me, Louie Knight, Aberystwyth’s only private detective and more frog than prince. Not many of the people in it lived happily ever after either. But at least half of them lived which was a good average for the town in those days…
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