Child LabourThere is a special part of Hell I'd like to reserve for those arses that order every single Sunday paper. Do you know how heavy that makes the bundle of papers some poor kid (ie me) has to lug around? Funny how your papers always seemed to get mangled in your letterbox...
I loved my paper round, but, looking back, I was getting paid peanuts to ruin my back and cycle around in the cold and dark. How were you exploited as a child?
(
chthonic, Fri 17 Feb 2006, 12:05)
« Go Back
Paper roundI had a paper round as a kid. I was probably about eleven. I remember that newsie wasn't keen because I was underage but he was a friend of my dad so it was wangled somehow. Anyway the round covered two villages in West Yorkshire near Huddersfield. I had a trolley piled up with papers. Thankfully this was before Sunday papers were humoungous like they are now but even so, it was hard work for a skinny wretch like me.
After a few weeks of this my french pen friend came to stay (a school organised exchange - remeber those?) and he helped me do my round. On getting back to the shop newsie told me I was two pounds short. (This was 1978 or something - two quid was quite a lot). He said he had to let me go. I was devastated. My dad would be angry. I was embarrassed in front of my french pf. I went home and cried. Mum was sympathetic. A few days later french pf went home, probably shaking his head in wonderment at les rosbifs, and life carried on. My mum told me to get my dirty clothes out to put in the wash. I checked the pockets of the jeans that needed washing and pulled out two pound notes! They'd been there all the time. Quickly deciding against returning them to newsie I pocketed them. I never did a paper round again.
(, Sun 19 Feb 2006, 11:10, Reply)
« Go Back