As a school boy, I was
always short of cash. Money burnt a hole in my pocket. I just loved chips and
sweets. This also caused quite a problem when it came to financing train
spotting expeditions. We couldn’t afford to just go careering off by train all
the time. We managed these exploits with pocket money, extra help from generous
parents and cash from part-time jobs – which, in my case, at least - were often
short lived. I did a paper round and for a few months I sold Wall’s ice cream
each Sunday.
We were taken from
Port Sunlight in the back of a lorry and dropped off with our hand pushed
trolleys [cooled inside with dry ice] into various Birkenhead housing estates to
knock on doors before being picked up again at the end of the day. On one
occasion, the front door was opened by Mandy Hill, who played on the wing for
Tranmere Rovers. He had a particularly wide gait when he ran. I have possibly
never seen a footballer since, whose legs were bandier than Mandy’s. That was
as exciting as it got selling ice cream.
One day, I caught the
edge of the kerb with my trolley wheels and sent a full load of choc-ices and
Neapolitan family bricks all over the road. Another reason I did not stick it
for long was that it impinged on what might otherwise have been weekend train
spotting time - so it was a bit of a
“Catch-22” situation, really.
The money I earned
from my paper rounds, twelve of them in a week, helped finance my trips, but
only marginally. I earned ten shillings [50p today], in the form of a brown ten
bob note, which was paid when we got back to the shop each Saturday morning. I
promptly blew one shilling and one old penny of it on a large bottle of
dandelion and burdock [10d] and a quarter of a pound of liquorice torpedoes
[3d].
I worked for Mr and
Mrs J.H. Jones, an equally rotund, but jolly and kindly couple, who were the
newsagents in our local parade in Mount Pleasant Road, Wallasey, where the
whole neighbourhood did its daily shopping prior to large scale domestic
refrigeration and the supermarket revolution. When I started, I was given the
easiest paper round, displacing one of their stalwart and seasoned deliverers,
who had obviously worked his way up to this most favoured position, closest to
the shop.
I expected Jack’s
skivvy to give me a hard time after that but he never showed me any ill will.
He just put his head down and got on with all the other little extra jobs that
were endlessly heaped on him.
I suspect he was
ousted for me either because they thought my parents were a bit posh or that I
was a bit soft and it was quite possibly both. Mr Jones used to put his arms
round my shoulders rather a lot, as if I needed a frequent squeeze of
encouragement just to keep going. Simultaneously, some of his most trusted
operatives were helping themselves to copious packets of cigarettes, on the
other side of the stock room.
My round was the
shortest and therefore the quickest. While my mate Ian was juggling with his
sack and falling off his bike whilst cornering a steep hill at speed on
Sandringham Drive and sustaining some nasty cuts and bruises in the process, I
was back at the shop with my feet up, leafing through the comics.
Sunday papers - even
more so today, of course - were stupidly heavy and required two separate trips.
I wished that more people had taken the wafer-thin Morning Star every day of
the week, like the one possible communist on my round, who lived in Shiel Road.
They were altogether more manageable as newspapers went, when you had to carry
them in bulk.
Royal Scot Class No. 46156 at Chester on
28/9/62. My dad had taken me to Gobowen to watch King Class No. 6000 King
George V come through at speed on a special train. I know how lucky I was to
have parents who were happy to subsidise my hobby so frequently.
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