8. ABSOLUTE VERY FIRST TIME...A PROPER JOB (NOT A PAPER ROUND)

The absolute very first time I got a job (a proper job not a paper round) was at the local market every Friday while I was supposed to be at school. It was thanks to my mate, Stumpy, who had suffered a childhood accident that had left him with a slightly shorter middle finger and this was enough to warrant a nickname which even the teachers tended to use.

That didn't stop him (or me) hauling huge rolls of draylon and cotton in and out of the van for a market stall-holder who fancied himself as a bit of a Del Boy, chirping "lovely jubbly" at his customers and telling them they were "creme de menthe" (which they found hilarious) and calling me and Stumpy "a couple of plonkers" and "a load of chateau neuf du pape" (which they also found hilarious but we didn't).

It was cynical exploitation of the complete absence of HR employment and workplace harassment laws in the 70s & 80s (well, HR anything - it was Personnel in those days and you only saw the buggers when they turned up to fire you) although he abused us both equally, despite Stumpy's disability, so we couldn't fault him there.

Stumpy had discovered a loophole in the school timetable on a Friday afternoon whereby, in place of CCF (the cadet force where mental and physical abuse was legitimised as ‘educational’ and ‘character-building’ - think Neidermeyer in Animal House or click here), normal kids (and conscientious objectors) could opt to take on community service instead. This was known as ‘granny-bashing’ without a hint of malice, affection or humour. It was just the accepted name for community service and even the teachers tended to use it.

Stumpy had worked out that, if you asked the dinner ladies for a sandwich at lunchtime rather than a sit-down meal (and, remember, this was before the invention of packaged convenience food in the chiller cabinet) and then if you had a quick cup of tea with your granny whilst telling them you’d been chatting for hours and relying on mild dementia to avoid any push-back, you could make it to the market stall by 2pm in time to start the afternoon shift.

This was a decent plan but not entirely fool-proof. It required a level of single-mindedness and focus rarely seen in teenage boys and, unfortunately, there were usually a couple of distractions to delay us. Firstly, my home town corralled all of its senior citizens into a small ghetto north of the centre, hemmed in by a large bowling green, the Darby & Joan Hall, the main hospital and several funeral parlours. For some reason that is still not entirely clear to me, ice cream vans tended to patrol this area undeterred by a complete absence on the streets of anyone under the age of 60 until me and Stumpy turned up for our brief visits. It is one of the inescapable facts of life that it's impossible to walk past an ice cream van without stopping to order a 99....and we were hardly likely to break that particular rule, despite our tight timeframe and the risk of getting gooey cream all over our hands.

Secondly, in the days before the internet, there were only two places where porn mags were readily available - newsagents and hedgerows - and, for yet another reason which remains opaque to this day, the hedgerows around the old people's ghetto were a ripe source of material. Suffice it to say, the consequences of this discovery had remarkably similar parallels with the arrival of the ice cream van and, in both cases, led to a ticking-off from Del Boy and an instruction to clean ourselves up before handling the draylon.

To be fair though, getting to work for 2pm was the easy bit. The morning shift was the tough one. At 16, the last job you wanted was one which started at 6 o’clock in the morning (unless it was a doddle like a paper round). I can count on one hand how often I’ve had to get up this early for work in the 40 intervening years.

Once was in my early twenties when I had a job in an office near Smithfield Market in London where the pubs would open temptingly early to service the meat packers once they’d finished their night shift. Well, the meat packers and any young lads from the surrounding offices who thought it would be jolly japes to join them for a couple of pints before work....which is why Anthony, Chris and I turned up at the Hope one morning in our suits and ties for a full English breakfast and some lager tops. I learned three things from this experience: 1. At 7 in the morning, 3 pints of lager tops get you as pissed as a bucket-load in the evening. 2. Hairy-arsed meat-packers do not consider young suited office lads good company no matter how many pints of lager tops you consume and 3. Giggling, making farting noises and coughing "blow job" during the 9am office briefing is not likely to improve your chances of career progression.

Anyway, back in the early 80s, with the cash from the market on a Friday and an equally-lucrative washing up gig at the George Hotel on a Saturday, I was well-placed to splash out at the shops on Sunday. At least I could’ve done if any of them had actually been open.

In the 80s, the only places allowed to open on a Sunday, even briefly, in my home town were All Saints Church, the paper shop and the pub. Not even Woolies for my fix of over-priced 12 inch Smiths singles and a bag of pick 'n' mix. It's probably why our age group has coped so well with lockdown; it's a form of nostalgia. I had heard of far-flung exotic places – Scunthorpe, Lincoln – where shops were occasionally allowed to open for the whole of the weekend. But, back home, I had to wait until the change to trading laws in 1994 to visit Woolies on a Sunday by which time, in line with most of the UK, I didn’t particularly want to anymore.

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