When I was a couple of months short of my thirteenth birthday, I became a paper boy for the first time. Last Sunday, after my seventy-fifth birthday, I retired. I didn’t have a continuous career delivering newspapers; I stopped when I was about twenty; by then, what had been a seven-day-a-week part-time career had narrowed down to one Sunday round, albeit a large one. By then, I was working full-time as an apprentice motor mechanic.
The thing was, I loved the Sunday quiet even as a teenager, seeing early sunrises at different times of the year, particularly while cycling through Castle Hills in Huntingdon. Which was then part of my round, there were also the early-morning mists over the river and swirling around the hills.
After I argued with the new manager at the shop, after about seven years, my career at that shop came to an end.
When my son decided to give up his paper round. He asked me to take his paper bag back to the shop for him. This simple request restarted my news delivery career, this time at Parker’s Newsagents. There was a notice on the shop door asking for Sunday newspaper delivery people. After enquiring what rounds were available and overlooking a look of disbelief on the shop assistant’s face, I had myself a Sunday job, and the paper bag returned home with me.
My son was not impressed, but some months later, when the gearbox broke on his car, there was enough money from my earnings from Parkers in my money box to buy him one from a scrapyard and, of course, a willing helper to assist him in changing it.
The Sunday quiet and the spectacular skies as the sun rises at certain times of the year are still there but I will no longer have a reason to be up at five a.m. (It was until last year four thirty.) So, ten years after retiring from my other career, I finally called it a day on this one and as far as I know, what was Whittlesey’s oldest paper boy has handed in his bag for the last time.
Read more about my early paper delivery career here: https://fenlandphil.com/2018/06/03/delivering-the-news/
Fenlandphil's Blog 