I was round at a friend's house last week, and when I popped into her local newsagents for a Crunchie bar on the way home I found myself being served by my old 'boss'; a man who owned the local newsagents where I did my paper round every Sunday. He didn't recognise me (which is fair enough when you consider I was fourteen years old when he last saw me; though he himself hadn't changed a bit, aside from the grey hair and his wearing of 'normal' trousers instead of the unflattering too-tight shorts he used to wear in the shop of a Sunday morning in the midst of winter!).
Part of me wondered if he was happy with his lot in life; he's obviously always been a newsagent and did he think that was a fulfilling way to spend the majority of his life, distributing snippets of news and chocolate to the great unwashed of Essex (me included!) And another part of me couldn't help musing over the 'life lessons' I've learned from my association with newsagents over the years. Allow me to elucidate...
Right and Wrong - I think I've blogged about this incident before, but the little newsagent's shop on the corner of my road was the scene of my first and last 'crime'; pickpocketing a pack of Wrigley's chewing gum when the nice man who ran the shop's back was turned. To cut a long story short, my Dad found the wrapper, interrogated me, dragged me back to the shop by my ear and made me confess and pay up out of my pocket money. I've never stolen anything since.
Patience and Endurance - when I was doing said paper round at the age of fourteen, I had to walk two miles in all weathers carrying a heavy bag full of 'Sunday Times's (why didn't I have more sense and insist on a paper round in a 'Sun' reading street?!). One lady on my route insisted I post her 'Sunday Times' through section by section, in a particular order (sport last, 'The Funday Times' first). And there was a man who insisted on actually opening the door to me when I delivered his paper, which would have been fine except he always wore the same stained dressing gown that showed off his grey matted chest hair.
(The newsagent's I worked for had a painted sign outside the shop which stated "Have Your Paper Delivered By Us...Without Any Trouble, Without Any Fuss!" That never failed to make me laugh, especially when I'd struggle past the sign at 6:30am in the pouring rain).
Empathy - there was a little newsagents' shop my friend and I would always pass when walking home from school. But we'd rarely ever go inside, because the lady behind the counter had the most unsmiling, scariest face we'd ever seen. We nicknamed her 'Medusa'. And then one day I was walking home from school past the shop, when I fell over and cut myself (I was always doing this as a child; I was perpetually covered in so many bumps and bruises that one of my teachers was convinced I was getting beaten up at home, but that's another story!) 'Medusa' had seen me fall over, and came running out of the shop with a plaster. When she'd patched my knee up for me, she gave me a chocolate bar. I stopped calling her 'Medusa' after that.
In conclusion...who knows what path of rack and ruin I'd have taken in life had I not been saved by these vital encounters with newsagents during my formative years?!
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