Doing the maths, I figured this meant in six weeks I would have close to a hundred pounds. A hundred pounds to my mind was a small fortune—it was enough to buy a brand new bike and still have fifty quid left. It took my mum a whole year to buy my last bike. On this kind of money I could even afford a secondhand motorcycle, or even, at a stretch…an old car! Not that I had any use for one as I was still three years away from being eligible to drive.
This was simply amazing to me, the concrete of the council estate where I lived was still all around but its greyness was beginning to fade. As I had suspected, working worked.
Some of the houses where I collected from on a Friday were also the ‘nice’ houses. I could see into their living rooms as I stood by the door waiting for someone to come and pay. These houses had a different smell, they had a different energy, there was more going on. The women who answered the doors seemed to smile more, they were prettier, kinder, they even looked younger. What was it with these people? They had something else going on.
Then one day I realised. They were happier.
I made another mental note, bigger, nicer house, equals happier—usually unless you were Ralph or one of the other grumblies.
10 Richard Branson (Virgin Radio)
9 Michael Grade (Channel 4)
8 Andrea Wonfor (Channel 4)
7 Don Atyeo (The Power Station)
6 Timmy Mallett (Piccadilly Radio)
5 Charlie Parsons (The Big Breakfast)
4 Waheed Alli (The Big Breakfast)
3 Matthew Bannister (Greater London Radio)
2 Lesley Douglas (Radio 2)
1 Mike Hibbett (Ralph’s Newsagents)
My newsagency career continued to blossom and with it my bank account. It wasn’t long before I saw my next promotion. Forget the army, there are more ranks to the hierarchical structure of a newsagents than most international organisations.
My next stripe on the arm was a biggy: I was to be elevated to the much-envied post of ‘marker-up’.
The marker-up was the boy who arrived at the same time as Mike the manager. Mike was dead cool, he was forty, which I thought was pretty old at the time but not that old—not in his case at least. To my mind there are young forty year olds and there are old forty year olds, and Mike was definitely one of the former. He loved to play squash, had been a pretty handy footballer in his day and still kept himself fit by going for a run three or four times a week. He was also one of life’s good guys.
Mike is still in the top three bosses I’ve ever had. He was the type of guy that you just did things for, he was always really kind to me. I remember he had a son who I thought was so lucky to have a dad like him.
Mike worked hard and always had a smile on his face, especially when the two girls from the chemist came in for their fags. The girls from the chemist were hot—and I mean really hot. I can still picture them perfectly today. They had huge big smiles, the kind that can take you away to another place. Both of them were brunettes, with bunches of gorgeous shiny hair cascading down over their shoulders and they always came in wearing their white coats, almost always giggling.
Please don’t tell me—anyone who’s reading this—that they ever got any older. Girls like that should be preserved for ever, just as you remember them. One was called Jill, the small one, she was the one I really fancied, but I never found out the name of the other one—I just called them Jill and Thrill.
Obviously I was far too young to stand a chance with either—they were in their twenties and I was only thirteen—but I could fantasise. Boy, could I fantasise.
Meeting and talking to women that I would never otherwise have come into contact with was another big bonus of working in the shop. I could see what made them laugh, what made them sad, how they were so different to the men that came in. Experience that undoubtedly helped me in the rest of my life when it came to getting on with the opposite sex.
If you think about it, boys of a certain age usually only get to talk to girls roughly the same age—their only other female interaction being with members of their family and their mum’s mates or maybe their mates’ mums. This is why so many young boys end up fancying such ladies, it’s a question of needs must. These women are often the only other ‘real women’ young boys come into contact with.
Perhaps this is also why so many mums also fancy their sons’ mates or their mates’ sons. Both parties have an equally limited circle of opportunity; both sides are vulnerable and there is a common thirst to be quenched. Drink up everyone!
My job as marker-up meant I had to arrive at the shop just before 5 a.m. The newspapers having already been delivered in their bundles in the doorway, it was my first task of the day to haul them in off the step, cut them open and count them all out to make sure there was none missing—twenty-five to a quire, eight quires to a bundle, if you were any copies short, you’d make a note and then call and ask for the van to come back later to drop off replacements.
Next we would dress the counter, stacking each brand of paper in order of their popularity, the most popular nearest to hand for efficiency. In our shop it was the Daily Mirror first, the Sun second, then the Daily Mail, the Star and the Express; we hardly sold any broadsheets, maybe ten each of the Telegraph and The Times—and no Guardians at all! Once this was done we would be set to start, both Mike and I now barely visible surrounded by mini skyscrapers of newspapers.
It was always a competition as to who could finish marking up their rounds first, pistols at dawn, Bic biros at the ready. Each paper round had a corresponding marking up book. The marking up books were handwritten elaborate affairs, not unlike a cricket scorebook in their intricacy and precise beauty. The drawing up of these books was a delicate and painstaking process and one which Ralph had reputedly evolved over the years. No one was particularly clear exactly how or why his system worked but work it did. If there had been a fire there is little doubt the stack of marking up books would have been the thing that Ralph would risk his life to save, certainly way ahead of any of us paperboys.
Mike and I would split the books, eight rounds each and then get to work. The key to speed was getting used to where each brand of paper was without having to look up from the book and losing your place, like a drummer with a drumkit. Once a paper had been slid from the top of its pile, a fast firm fold was then required to make it behave as it was stacked on top of the round having been marked somewhere in the right-hand margin of the front page with the number of the house to which it was destined. The first paper for each new street also bore the street name.
It sounds like a laborious process—and I suppose it was—but it could be carried out with relative alacrity. Once a rhythm was achieved you could really get into the swing, I loved it. You could almost make the papers crack if you folded them sharply.
My workstation was based behind the infamous post office counter while Mike would work from the main cigarette counter. He was so fast, the fastest, he would almost always beat me hands down, finishing his half of the rounds a good round or two before me. This was even more impressive considering he was serving customers as well as joking and laughing with them at the same time.
The best thing about getting the job of marker up was that you then didn’t have to do a paper round at all. Sure you had to get up even earlier than before, which some of the lads just couldn’t comprehend, but then again you got paid so much more. The financial gain curve was exponential.