Photo from Judith
I was really pleased to see that Judith had given us a new installment to the “Hats and Bonnets” stories, so pleased that when I got the e-mail notification on my phone from the WiFi in work that I waited until I had downloaded the whole “Swarthy Gent in the Panama Hat” page before I left so that I could read it on the way home.
It wasn’t until a few days later that I finally went back to leave a comment and by then I was smiling about the walk home where I’d relied on my radar to stop me from bumping into lampposts of falling off the kerb as I walked with my nose glued to my phone.
I used to walk around my paper round like that, very seldom bumping into anything, most mornings the book I had my nose in would have been the school book of whichever lesson I had homework due in that morning. (Probably why my marks for homework weren’t always too good).
Except Wednesdays, Wednesdays were different.
My paper round was a large sort of circular walk, starting and ending near the newspaper shop. On Wednesdays, one of the houses near the start of the round had a girlie magazine to be delivered called “Jackie”. Instead of delivering their paper at the beginning of my walk, I would put the paper to the back of the bag and walk the round with my nose glued to the magazine until I’d read every last word of it by the time I’d finished the round and would carefully replace Jackie into the paper before posting it through the letterbox.
I’ve mentioned my paper round in a previous post “Milkman“.
Thanks for the pingback Sallyann. I love the story of the paper round. We don’t have paper rounds like that anymore. The papers are all delivered wrapped in polythene and tossed from a car. So thanks again for stirring the memories.
You’re most welcome.
The “paperboys” here come in all shapes and sizes, I used to see one each morning, a pensioner pulling the papers along in a shopping trolley. I walk a different route home now but I often wonder if she still delivers the news each day.
Apparently these days a newsagent needs to provide all sorts of permits and permissions to allow youngsters to deliver papers which is why often a person of the older generation delivers nowadays!
I know that safety comes first, and these days it isn’t as safe for anyone as it was then, but it seems that instead of the old canvas bags we used to carry the new ones should be made of red tape.