I’d already had a paper round for several years before I got a daily one in Sudbury as a teenager. When Dad gave up the village shop in Lavenham and moved to Sudbury, he didn’t give up the Sunday newspaper supply and deliveries. From before I was born, he would get up before first light on a Sunday to sort the newspapers that had been dropped on our doorstep, then drive over to Lavenham to deliver them there, and in Brent Eleigh and Preston St Mary, too. In the very early years, I think he cycled the whole way! By the time I was four, I’d started to go with him on some Sundays, and when I was eight or nine, I had my own regular Sunday round, on a little estate of council houses in Lavenham.
After a while, that round was totally “mine”. I got the papers from Dad, collected the money from my customers, and kept a ha’penny (half penny) per paper and a ha’penny per house for myself, paying all the other money back to Dad. This must have been in the very late sixties and I was ten at most, because it was pre-decimalization. Before decimalization in 1971, there were 12 pennies to a shilling, and 20 shillings to a pound; that’s why we had to memorize our multiplication tables up to 12×12 at school.
Within a few years, “the Sunday papers” was a whole family activity. Mum would sit in the van (a VW camper) on the Market Square, selling newspapers to regular and passing customers, and keeping us supplied with cheese sandwiches. The rest of us would be out on deliveries, sometimes solo and sometimes with Dad. There were times when we absolutely hated the early morning start every Sunday, especially in winter when it was cold and dark; we were often really freezing cold. Other times, though, it was lovely being involved in something all together, and also spending time with Dad.
He had known the area and many of its inhabitants since his childhood; his sister Kit lived in Lavenham (in the newly-built replacement alms-houses by the church?) and he’d grown up there in the village. He also knew the countryside intimately; he could tell the names of dozens, if not hundreds, of different birds and plants (recognizing birdsong long before he saw the bird), and could spot other wildlife and point it out to you – pheasants, hares, squirrels, foxes, rabbits, and occasional deer.
Driving around the country lanes with him was often a delight. We would have Ed Stewart Family Favourites on the radio; silly songs like the Laughing Policeman and Right Said Fred, and others that I still love to hear when they come on the radio, like Grocer Jack (excerpt from a Teenage Opera).
Dad had a wealth of stories and knew a lot of the history of the different houses and their occupants; it all seems dreamlike now. There was a hall with a gatehouse in Brent Eleigh. Even then it was run down and almost ghostly, although it was occupied. Some images of it – the overgrown driveway and the ramshackle, paint-peeling conservatory – still appear in my dreams.
Our regular route took in a few pubs, and Dad had a drink in most of them! He’d have been well over the limit these days. The landlord of the pub in Brent Eleigh had enormous waxed moustaches that he was inordinately proud of. I was allowed to go into the Six Bells in Preston, and have a soft drink and a bag of crisps to take outside. The bar was much higher than I was; I couldn’t see over it.
In the early seventies, Noel Edmonds moved to a little old cottage in Preston St Mary and renamed it Dingly Dell, the name he later used on his weekly radio programme. Jayne and I were terribly disappointed that we rarely saw him and that he wasn’t nice when we did. He was so famous and popular at that time, but we soon decided we didn’t like him at all. It’s probably a good job we had no such thing as Twitter!
Fading Memories 