I was aware of the concept of money from quite a young age. I suppose, because it was pretty clear to me, that we didn’t have enough, and that seemed to be a problem. We never went hungry by any means but there was often an atmosphere in our house. Especially in those early years and it was always to do with money.
In hindsight, we had plenty, everything we needed and probably more, but consumerism was rising, and this makes people feel poor and inadequate. Especially if you can’t keep up with the Joneses, in our case literally.
The only way this affected me directly was I was unable to buy things other kids were. If the kids on the street were going to the cinema or swimming, I wasn’t able to go. I did get to go swimming of course, just not to the expensive pool with slides. If I wanted some agency, I needed to make some money. So, I became an entrepreneur.
The venture was called “Soap & Suds” My older brother even helped me design a flyer (hand drawn and coloured in) I took the prototype to the corner shop in Chalvey to make 20 x 1p copies. That should do it.
I was certain it would take off, already adding up in my mind how much I could earn and what I would buy! unfortunately, I haven’t grown out of this initial blind optimism. At least in this case there was very little at stake. In that sense, it was a great business model.
I had some experience washing cars and already had a bucket and sponge!
We used to knock on the neighbours’ doors and ask them if they wanted their car washed, we never asked for money but there was an understanding that this was a service and we generally got paid. £3 was a fair price and we rarely got less.
The problem was out of the 10 neighbours or so we knew well enough to want to engage with, only a handful of them owned cars. By “knew” I mean we were aware they were not single, unmarried and over 50 as they seemed to be the mean ones. We might wash 2 cars on a good day. But we probably only averaged 1 a week, and at £3 two ways it was not going to cut it.
After the failed attempt at becoming a car washing tycoon, I decided I had to get a paper round. There was no pocket money in our house, and I needed to buy sweets and stink bombs.
The paper round was becoming a family tradition, I think all of my siblings had had one or maybe the same one. Soon it was handed down to me. There were 2 papers that needed delivering as part of the round. If I remember correctly the property news came on a Wednesday and the Slough Express came on a Thursday. They came in Palettes of 50 that were left outside our front door rain or shine. I think there were about 150 houses on the route so there were 300 newspapers in total. I was now the proud owner of 2 illuminous yellow messenger sacks.
If you haven’t done a paper round for a local newspaper let me, tell you now, it was one of the purest forms of child slavery.
I say local as I believe if you’re dropping off 10 to 20 of the broadsheets for the local newsagent there’s some money in that. For comparison: dropping off the broadsheets is like working in a tailor on Saville Row and delivering the local papers is like working in a Chinese sweatshop. As I had inherited the round from one of my brothers there was not much of a handover.
Whichever way I sliced it without the use of a car it seemed almost unachievable.
The Adidas advert should have a kid doing a paper round in their sneakers. Impossible is nothing. From my perspective, it looked far more difficult than being Lionel Messi. The round itself started half a mile from the house, which carrying this load was no insignificant distance.
I used to fill the 2 bags with all of the papers and any samples that may be included that week as I’d been shown by my predecessor. On one occasion the freebie was Airwaves chewing gum. I must’ve been one of the first to ever try them. Obviously, a fair amount of them went missing.
I would then haul the loaded bags one by one over my head, the straps forming an X across my chest, 300 newspapers crushing my boyish hips on either side. Like some sort of shit Marvel character, Paper Boy was ready to take on the streets of Slough with his eucalyptus breath.
The weight was almost unbearable, and at this time I was fairly muscular for my age. The collective bags must have been around 25kg, probably half my weight. I’d hoped that there was some secret as even though I was no quitter and being the youngest of 4 brothers always up for a challenge, punching above my weight, I couldn’t see a way forward. Once those bags were on, I could barely walk. Nevertheless, I cracked on.
My brother showed me the route and I soldiered on. It’s probably the hardest job I ever had. It wasn’t only strenuous there were some houses you could not get near for fear of being chased by dogs. We had 2 dogs so I wasn’t afraid of them, but the ones I encountered on the paper round I think may have lived alone after eating their owner.
They would have been more at home on resident evil. I wasn’t aware of an isolated outbreak of rabies in the area, but might it be so? It wasn’t in the papers.
There was one door, it was white with peeling paint and a small, bubbled square of glass at eye level like that of a pub window. Alongside it was a vertical letterbox. My brother was really excited for me to go up to this one. He could hardly contain himself balancing between giggles and egging me on.
He then stopped and said seriously “Don’t put your fingers in the letterbox” he advised I rolled the paper up as tightly and rigidly as I could, like a paper sausage. I then forced the heavy spring of the letterbox open, no sooner had I done this than there was an almighty snarl and a 4-legged “thud” on the door, and the paper was torn from my hands.
Even then, at £6.85 a week, it seemed like a terrible deal.
I could be maimed, then I’d need counselling, the stakes were too high. There was a brief period when I had a helper which made it much easier. My dad had resigned from his job as head teacher, the reason shrouded in mystery at the time, but the good news was he took to the round with great vigour. I’d rarely seen such enthusiasm from him.
Perhaps when you go from a very stressful job to the simplicity and honest work of the delivery of complimentary newspapers is a welcome change. He seemed to enjoy it so much he would probably have continued to do it for free. After a couple of weeks, he was back teaching again and my struggle continued.
I confided in Ali, the brother who had most recently had the round. I explained to him my woes. He said, “You’ve actually been delivering those papers?!” flabbergasted. To which I replied “Yeah” confused.
He then proceeded to tell me that no one gave a toss about the local newspaper and that he’d show me a trick the following week.
One afternoon I came home from school passing a supermarket trolley in the front garden and before I could take off my rucksack he said “Right, you ready? “First, we put all the papers into the illuminous bags and then put those into the trolley, we then pushed it to the end of the street and up the undulating road to a little bit of wasteland just before the heavily tree-covered street my paper round began on at the back of Herschel Park.
He’d explained on our way to this point, amongst other things chuffing on a Sovereign cigarette that the important thing was “that the papers disappeared”. He then drew my attention to 2 large aluminium 1100-litre wheelie bins, half hidden by ivy.
He lifted the black plastic lids one by one and flung them backwards, he then proceeded to empty the contents of the bags from the trolley into the cavernous belly of the bins. The hollow clang of the metal signalled victory as the papers hit the bottom, dusting his hands together in a “we’re done for today” type gesture he let out a broad toothy grin looking very pleased with himself that I reciprocated.
I never delivered those papers again, nothing was said of it, and he was right. Not long after, we moved to Great Yarmouth.