At that time, I also did evening runs to London for the United Counties operating a duplicate bus service. At weekends I drove the duplicate bus to Weymouth where I would stop overnight and then return via Cheltenham. I often took my eldest daughter with me and if it was fine we would go down to the beach if it rained we would go to the cinema. I was in Weymouth on the day of the World Cup Final and was in my room listening to it on my radio when the landlady called up and invited me down stairs to watch it on the television. I couldn't get down there quick enough.
I worked for Heap’s for about eight months and when I left I went to work for W H Smith. This meant a three thirty start in the morning delivering newspapers around Wellingborough and Thrapston and the villages in those areas. When I'd finished my deliveries I would work in the warehouse boxing up magazines until about one o'clock. One morning at Weston Favell, I jumped out of the van and I thought I had twisted my ankle. When I got home and took my sock off, my foot was completely black so my wife told me to go to hospital. When I was there, it was found that I had broken a bone in my foot and they put a plaster cast on me right up to my knee. My three girls had travelled with me to the hospital and they thought it was great when we were all taken home in an ambulance. I decided to carry on working. We were living in Ivy Road at that time and I used to walk to work. I was stopped two or three times by the police who thought I was drunk but when I explained to them the situation they would often give me a lift to work where, because I couldn't get into a van, I used to deliver papers to Bedford in the firm's car.
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The three girls went into foster care and I was working part time for Country Lion Minibuses. The manager let me sleep at the garage in Denmark Rd until I got some where to live. My three girls were staying at Long Buckby and I was allowed the use of one of the buses to visit them each Sunday.
After a time, I left Walkers and went to work for Adams Bakery in Gladstone Road, delivering bread to shops in the area.
I then found a bedsit at the bottom of Wantage Road and my room overlooked the County Ground where I could watch the football matches through my windows.
By 1970 my youngest daughter was living with her mother in St James and my middle daughter was living with my wife's brother in Far Cotton. My eldest daughter was in a care home just below where my bed sit was.
I noticed my eldest daughter talking to the driver and she had a cigarette in her mouth. As the bus pulled away I put my head out of the window and yelled at her "take that cigarette out of your mouth." As her mouth dropped open, the cigarette fell out and dropped in a puddle. The next time I saw her I told her not to smoke in the street but if she wanted a cigarette, she should come to my flat. She was a St John's Ambulance Brigade Cadet and she often came to my bedsit with her friend who lived across the other side of the park. When it was time for them to go I always walked her friend home across the park. . . . . .
After a twelve month stint I left the buses and went to work for Wesley's Coaches of Stoke Goldington, where I did school runs along with the bus service, which operated from Newport Pagnell to Northampton, arrive and depart from The Mayorhold. It was whilst working for Wesley's that I met my future wife. She lived in Far Cotton with her family. While I was waiting for my divorce to go through, I gave up my bedsit and moved in with her family. Owing to the distance I was travelling between Northampton and Stoke Goldington each day I decided to give WH Smith a ring and spoke to my old Manager, Fred Bird. He offered me a permanent night job which I accepted and so began 18 years or real enjoyment.
Sorry if it seems that I have skimped over these few years but there were things I didn't want to publish for personal reasons and I'm sure you will understand.
Before I start, let me give you some idea of the layout of W H Smith's warehouse when they were based in Chalk Lane. The offices were at the front, facing the back of properties in Marefair. As you entered, you would turn left, and then on the right hand side was the door leading into the warehouse. As you entered the warehouse on the left was the loading bay, where the vans would reverse in to be loaded early in the mornings. The loading bay was big enough to accommodate up to five vans, dependant on the size of the vehicles. On the other three walls were boxes into which we would put magazines and periodicals. There was at least one box for each shop we delivered to, which meant that there would be about 350 altogether. When each box was full it would be sealed and put on the loading bay, just where it went was dependent on which van it was going on. The depot served a very large area. It stretched from Thrapston right down to Brackley, Buckingham and Winslow to Daventry, Braunston, Long Buckby and all villages in between. There were also 2 vans that covered the Bletchley and Leighton Buzzard areas. We would start work on Sunday night at about Midnight because there wasn't a lot of box filling to do but the rest of the week, we would start at any time between nine o'clock and ten. For each box we packed, there was a sheet detailing what each shop wanted and you would go round putting the item into the boxes
we would have a break at about three o'clock where we would go into the office and have our sandwiches and tea. In the office there were normally the Radio Times and T V Times as they did not go out until the following Monday, ready for sale on Tuesday morning. Every so often we would see a mouse perched on the bundle of Radio Times but it didn't bother us.
At half past three we would load up the vans and take them down to the railway station and park them in the sidings to wait for the newspaper train to be shunted into the siding. Once there the vans would back up to the appropriate door and was then loaded up with the newspapers and if all went well, all the vans were away from the depot by four o'clock.. . .
My first thing I had to do was to learn the Brackley and Winslow route. The first drop was at Milton Malsor, then onto Blisworth. From there we continued to Towceste,r where there were about four shops, before going on to Silverstone and Syresham, after which we carried on to Brackley
One morning we were following a lorry loaded with chickens going to a factory in Brackley. We were about half way to Brackley when one of the cages fell off the lorry. There were chickens everywhere. We stopped to help the driver catch what we could but we kept four for ourselves. The chap who was teaching me the route lived in Far Cotton, so on the way back we stopped at his house and he took the chickens inside and fed them. Later on I went back to his house and "dispatched" them and we had two each.
Another route I worked on was on the Thrapston run, in which we delivered to Weston Favell, Billing, Ecton, Wilby, Great Doddington, Wellingborough, Irthlingborough, Finedon, Rushden, Raunds, Ringstead and Thrapston. In Rushden, I often met up with some of the police officers and they were given a set of newspapers which we always carried. It was a very handy arrangement because one morning I stopped to make a delivery and the engine would not start. I nipped up to the police station and told them and the next thing I knew, four policemen turned up and gave me a push.
Back to the warehouse
If you turned right you went through a door which took you into what we called the shop. Anything that was left over from the previous night was taken into there so that if any of the newsagents wanted extra newspapers or magazines, they could come in and pick them up.
As I said previously, I was living with my future wife's family. She had a son aged 11 called Steven. In the shop they sold Airfix Models and I often bought one because we, as staff, received a twenty percent discount. I would take them home and build them for Steven.
Sometimes I had to do the Bletchley run. This entailed driving to Bletchley Station to meet the paper train which arrived at about three o'clock in the morning. There we would to unload the newspapers onto trolleys and take them outside to load onto our vans. There were two of us carrying out this work as there was quite an area to cover. I normally covered Gt Brickhill, Woburn and Woburn Sands, Wavendon, Newport Pagnell Services on the M1, Newport Pagnell Town, Stoke Goldington and Hackleton
At the Services on the M1 we were always given a free full English breakfast which went down very well with a large mug of tea.
We normally finished work at about eight o'clock but quite often we would work until ten o'clock, sorting out and putting into boxes any late items along with the Radio and TV Times. This meant that if any newsagent was short of newspapers we would take them out to them. This was overtime and was always more than welcome.
I married Betty in 1972 and we were given a council house in Salcey Street. This meant that my eldest Daughter, Jane, could come to live with us.
We would start at ten o’clock at night and before we left we would make up the wrappers we needed for the shops we were packing for; then we would go to Castle Station to catch the ten thirty six train to Euston, which arrived around about midnight.
On the way to Euston we often played crib to pass away the time and it was then that I was first shown what to do by an elderly man called Lou. . . . . . . . .
When we got to Euston we would walk round to platform 14 where our train was waiting. On one side of the carriage there were benches on which we would pack the papers during our return journey.
We had a packing sheet for each shop we were packing for and when we got there we would put in each wrapper the odds and ends such as The Morning Star and Polski. Sometimes the Sporting Life and the Financial Times would be there and they would go in the wrappers as well. By half past midnight we probably had the Daily Mail, Telegraph, and the Guardian so we packed as many of them as possible. We also had the Daily Sketch but not many wanted that.
At Euston, we had porters that would unload the papers into cages, bring them to the train and put them on board the train for us. This gave us time to do quite a lot of packing. Normally all the papers had arrived by half past one which gave us forty minutes to do as much packing before our departure time of ten past two. Our first stop was Leighton Buzzard and then onto Bletchley. As I explained earlier, there were two vans waiting there for us, so the packing was done by two of the crew in order to make sure everything was ready when we got to Bletchley
Once you got used to the swaying of the carriages it became quite easy and most times we would have completed the whole of the packing by the time we reached Bletchley. Our packing coaches were always at the rear of the train, while at the front, behind the engine, was an ordinary coach where, if we had finished we could go and have a sit down.
As soon as we got to Northampton we would go to the sidings and sort out the parcels whilst waiting for the train to be shunted into place. As soon as it was, we opened the packing carriage doors so the vans could be backed up to the door, where their appropriate papers were waiting to be loaded onto the vans.
Some times if we had a Northampton train driver, he would let us ride in the cab with him. It was quite an experience, especially when we went over points at Castlethorpe, where we would switch lines at 75 mph onto the southbound track. After about a mile, we would switch on to the Northampton line, still doing 75mph. I found it a little unnerving travelling through Roade cutting, under the girders and also going through Hunsbury Hill tunnel. . . . .
We often had problems while on the paper train, especially if there was a derailment or points failure. One night a fork lift slid off the platform and onto the track and it was half past five before we left Euston. This meant that we had finished packing and were able to travel back to Northampton in the passenger coach at the front of the train.
Another time we reached the Castlethorpe crossing and came to a stop, as our coach was at the back I opened the sliding door and looked outside. All I could see was water. The whole area was flooded. This meant we could not cross over onto the Northampton track. We had to go to Rugby and then come back to Northampton via Long Buckby. That diversion put us two hours behind our usual time, which meant that every shop we went to was already open.
Starting two hours late meant that I really had to move myself and by the time I finished my run I had made up an hour, which wasn't too bad.
We also had problems with snow and ice. The coaches we worked in were quite old, so there were gaps between the doors and we would finish up with miniature snow drifts in the carriage. The steps often froze during these journeys, so we had to be careful getting out of the carriage in case we slipped.
We used to have five weeks holiday and during these weeks off, I used to do night runs for a friend of mine, taking hoses from Long and Hambly, at Billing, to Hotpoint in Llandudno and to the Hoover factory in Merthyr Tydfil. When I went to Llandudno I had to travel along the A55 from Chester through Colwyn Bay, where, on the outskirts of the town, there was a fish and chip shop. I used to stop there to buy some and drive to the sea front to eat them before continuing my journey to make my delivery. On the way home I would stop at a Motorway services for a break and get home by 4am. . . . . . . . .
Quite a lot happened after I started work at W H Smith. My wife got a part time job working in the staff canteen there. One evening, my eldest daughter came in with who, I thought, were two of her friends. After they had left her, Jane, my daughter, asked me if I knew who they were. It was after I'd said no that she dropped a bombshell, telling me one of them was my youngest daughter, Jennifer, who was living with her mother. This was in the September.
On the morning of Christmas Eve, we were getting ready to go to Smith's for our little Christmas do when there was a knock on the door. It was Jennifer. She had ran away from home. We took her down to Smith's with us and while she stayed there with my wife, I went to tell her mother where she was. To put it bluntly she couldn’t have cared less so Jennifer finished up spending Christmas with us. After the festive period I applied to the courts for custody of her and this was duly granted.
At work, I now had a regular run. Starting at Duston, I continued onto Harpole, Kislingbury Bugbrooke, Nether Heyford, Upper Heyford and Flore.From there I went on to Weedon, Newnham, Badby, Woodford Halse and Daventry where there were 4 shops. I then continued onto Welton, Long Buckby, East Haddon, and Holdenby then to the Bringtons before reaching my last call at Lower Harlestone.
When we had snow we normally doubled the drivers up. One day as I turned out of Bugbrooke the van slid into the ditch. Luckily a tractor was coming along and he pulled me out and towed me all the way to Nether Heyford.
Another time I was on my way to Holdenby when I came across a snow drift which I knew I wouldn’t be able to get through, so I reversed into a nearby gateway but ended up getting stuck, resulting in me having to walk to East Haddon where I was able to thumb a lift to Northampton. The recovery team went out later to get the van and bring it back to Northampton.
Another experience I had was when turned off of the A45 on my way to Newnham. As I drove over the brow of the hill, in my headlights I saw two fox cubs playing in the middle of the road. They froze in the headlights so I stopped, turned off the lights and turned them back on. The cubs had gone but it was wonderful to see them. I used to see badgers quite regularly because around Newnham there are quite a few badger setts. . . . . . . .
My mother was still alive and every so often she would book herself into St John’s Home in Weston Favell for two weeks and the Manager would let me call round on my way back from my run so I could feed the cat.
In the heatwave of 1976 I would call in home on the way back to the depot pick up my two dogs They would go back to the warehouse with me. When I had finished work, I would walk down through Becket's Park to Ransome Road lake and go swimming. This was about 6.30 in the morning and the water was still warm. There I would swim out to the island and on the way back would put my hands on the dogs backs and they would paddle back with me.
I often took the dogs to Delapre Golf course at about 6.30 and you would be surprised at the number of golf balls I found. I used to take them to work and the manager would pay me 50p each.
We had a new night manager his name was Ian Skeels and I did not know at the time he would become my son in law. He was talking to my wife saying he was going on holiday on his own so my wife said why don't you ask Jennifer he did and she said yes and so the romance blossomed Although they are now divorced they still keep in touch and we often chat on facebook.. . . . . . . . . .
I was on this run for 14 years and made many friends with the newsagents. One of them was Mrs Blaney, who ran the Nether Heyford stores. She lived in a house just above the shop. I would normally turn up at 4.30 am and if it was poor weather, I would walk up to her house and help her to the shop because she was quite elderly. She would give me 40 cigarettes a week.
Another good friend was Jack Foster who ran the Headlands Store in Daventry. He had arthritic hands. He could not carry the papers so I would get there about 5.15 and whilst I was carrying the papers and magazines into the shop, he would be making me a cup of tea. Also when the price of cigarettes went up he would keep 400 back at the old price and at Christmas he always gave me 200. He now lives in a bungalow in Milton Keynes as he is now wheelchair bound I still keep in touch and go to see him when I can.
Another was Mrs Ellison who ran the paper shop from her house in Welton. She had a load of animals including dogs, rabbits and she also had a horse which was 16 hands high. In the holidays I often went over to see her and take my grand children and they loved sitting on the horse he never batted an eyelid just carried on munching his straw. They looked so small sitting on his back.
At Long Buckby there were two newsagents opposite each other. Mrs Cross ran the shop and Mrs Bauldie ran her business from her house doing deliveries outside the village. It was Mrs Bauldie who gave me my first fridge freezer
Before I finish talking about newsagents there are two I must mention. They operated the post office and store in Holdenby. Although they were in their eighties they would always be up when I arrived at about six o'clock One day when I arrived there was no sign of them. Due to their age I was worried in case they had been taken ill. When I got to East Haddon I rang the police and explained the situation. When I got back to the warehouse they had rung in to say they had overslept but thanked me for my concern. They said they were woken up by the blue lights flashing on the police car. . . . . . . .
When we had the big storm which brought down the trees, I could not get to all of my drops in the smaller villages like the Bringtons. I rang them and told them I would get to them as soon as I could.
It was twelve o'clock before I managed to get to Holdenby where they made me a cup of tea and gave me some bacon sandwiches. One day just after I left there, I thought I saw a dog in the grass so I went back to check and found it was a small deer with its young. It just lay in the long grass until I went away
On my way back to the Bringtons I would often pick up a council worker. The early bus had been cut out and there was no way he could get to work on time without me helping him in this way. He was so grateful that he used to give me at least half a dozen duck eggs every week as a means of payment.
Sometimes there would be a rail strike and the papers had to Travel by road. The train crew would help the warehouse staff clearing all the magazines etc and putting them in the vans and parking them around the back in the car park leaving the bays clear for the paper vans to back in and unload. As we had to unload them by hand and then pack them this would make us late running. Some of the newsagents would come in and pick up their own supplies
Other times there would be a paper which might be having a late print and would miss the train and have to come by road. When we got to Northampton we would be told what time this paper would be arriving so we would go out and deliver around town then go back and pick up the late newspaper with a sheet showing the amount each newsagent wanted and we would deliver in bulk
Now we were paid up to 4.00am at normal rate for delivering the papers we would be paid 3 hours overtime. If a paper missed the train we would be paid another three hours overtime if two papers missed we would be paid 3 hours for every newspaper title so we would be well in pocket and we never finished later than eight in the morning.
Ian had left Smith's and returned to Cambridge to become a manager for a local newsagent. My daughter Jennifer went with him and they managed to get a council house in Cambridge.
They wanted to get married and because she was under twentyone I had to give my written permission.When we got to the registrar's office Jennifer's mother had rung up objecting to the marriage but once the registrar had seen my written permission she allowed it to go ahead. . . . . . .
Sometimes a company will have a bad apple in the basket. On the paper train we had an Irish man who, on a Sunday when we caught the 9.30 pm to London, would get absolutely blotto and we would have help him pack because he was completely incapable doing it himself.
One particular Sunday, we were running late and he asked me to help him. I said no, as I had enough to do to get finished myself. He stopped what he was doing, packing my round and started on another run. When we got to Northampton, I loaded up my van with what he had done and went and delivered that. I then went back and loaded up the rest with the help of the train supervisor who was also our union rep. When we finished we went to see the manager to complain. It finished up with the Irish guy getting the sack.
It did not finish there. As you know there was a dispute going on at Wapping with the management of the Sun and as we were waiting for the train to London he came down to try to persuade us not to go but we took no notice as he had been drinking again. Two nights later whilst we were on our train in Euston a gang of thugs came up from Wapping and began to beat up our union rep, I tried to ring the transport police and I was grabbed round the neck and threatened. The police turned up about half an hour later, after the gang had gone. Because of the danger of being ambushed on my run I carried a pick handle with me until the dispute was settled. We often had people come down to Smith's to barrack us including a town councillor whose language was disgusting.
The other bad egg was our new night manager. He was an Indian and very unpleasant but I found out he was frightened of dogs so when I finished my run I went home and picked up my two dogs before going back to the warehouse. As soon as he saw my dogs he would go in the office and lock the door.
Magazines had started going missing from the shop and the manager was talking about bringing in our own security and having everyone searched. Now, I was buying a book every two weeks. I always paid the night manager but he never gave a receipt and we reported this to the area manager. One day we met away from the warehouse with the union rep and he gave me some marked money and told me to carry on buying the books as normal. One morning the night manager was met by security who searched his car and found bundles of magazines. Apparently he had been supplying a news agent with them. He was sacked and prosecuted.
It was becoming clear that in the following year the paper train would finish and the papers would come by road. As I was now 52, with a hernia and with some of the bundles weighing over half a hundredweight i.e. 56pounds(25kg) I decided to take early retirement so I went to see the manager. This happened on a Friday. When I went to see him on Monday he told me to go home as they owed me a total of eight weeks holiday.
This brings me up to 1987, which was the year my mother died. . . . .
One more thing before I close this chapter. Each Saturday I used to vary my run and on one occasion as I was travelling between the Bringtons, at about half past four, I noticed an elderly man who was waving a stick whilst standing in the ditch at the side of the road. At first I thought it might be a tramp, so I carried on to Great Brington to make my delivery. When I reached there, my concern for the man grew so I decided to go back and check that everything was alright. When I reached the spot where the man was, Ii could see he that he wasn't a tramp as he appeared to be too well dressed. I asked him what had happened and he said he had slipped and fell into the ditch. When I asked him where he was going, he said he was going to visit his brother in Leicester. That didn't ring true to me, so I attempted to get him out of the ditch but I had to stand on his feet to pull him up. He was extremely cold as the temperature was below freezing. Once I had managed to get him into the van, I decided to take him with me to Daventry. I made one delivery in the town going on to Bowen Square, where I knew the town's main police station was situated. I went inside and reported to the police what had happened. They came outside to see my passenger and when he told them his name they said they had been looking for him as he had been reported as missing from a nursing home the previous evening. They took him into the police station, gave him cup of tea and then took him back to the home. When I had finished my deliveries and returned to the depot, I telephoned the home and was told that he had gone missing like this before but they thanked me and assured me he was ok.
More to follow........
We had a packing sheet for each shop we were packing for and when we got there we would put in each wrapper the odds and ends such as The Morning Star and Polski. Sometimes the Sporting Life and the Financial Times would be there and they would go in the wrappers as well. By half past midnight we probably had the Daily Mail, Telegraph, and the Guardian so we packed as many of them as possible. We also had the Daily Sketch but not many wanted that.
At Euston, we had porters that would unload the papers into cages, bring them to the train and put them on board the train for us. This gave us time to do quite a lot of packing. Normally all the papers had arrived by half past one which gave us forty minutes to do as much packing before our departure time of ten past two. Our first stop was Leighton Buzzard and then onto Bletchley. As I explained earlier, there were two vans waiting there for us, so the packing was done by two of the crew in order to make sure everything was ready when we got to Bletchley
Once you got used to the swaying of the carriages it became quite easy and most times we would have completed the whole of the packing by the time we reached Bletchley. Our packing coaches were always at the rear of the train, while at the front, behind the engine, was an ordinary coach where, if we had finished we could go and have a sit down.
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| Loading platform at Castle Station |
Some times if we had a Northampton train driver, he would let us ride in the cab with him. It was quite an experience, especially when we went over points at Castlethorpe, where we would switch lines at 75 mph onto the southbound track. After about a mile, we would switch on to the Northampton line, still doing 75mph. I found it a little unnerving travelling through Roade cutting, under the girders and also going through Hunsbury Hill tunnel. . . . .
We often had problems while on the paper train, especially if there was a derailment or points failure. One night a fork lift slid off the platform and onto the track and it was half past five before we left Euston. This meant that we had finished packing and were able to travel back to Northampton in the passenger coach at the front of the train.
Another time we reached the Castlethorpe crossing and came to a stop, as our coach was at the back I opened the sliding door and looked outside. All I could see was water. The whole area was flooded. This meant we could not cross over onto the Northampton track. We had to go to Rugby and then come back to Northampton via Long Buckby. That diversion put us two hours behind our usual time, which meant that every shop we went to was already open.
Starting two hours late meant that I really had to move myself and by the time I finished my run I had made up an hour, which wasn't too bad.
We also had problems with snow and ice. The coaches we worked in were quite old, so there were gaps between the doors and we would finish up with miniature snow drifts in the carriage. The steps often froze during these journeys, so we had to be careful getting out of the carriage in case we slipped.
We used to have five weeks holiday and during these weeks off, I used to do night runs for a friend of mine, taking hoses from Long and Hambly, at Billing, to Hotpoint in Llandudno and to the Hoover factory in Merthyr Tydfil. When I went to Llandudno I had to travel along the A55 from Chester through Colwyn Bay, where, on the outskirts of the town, there was a fish and chip shop. I used to stop there to buy some and drive to the sea front to eat them before continuing my journey to make my delivery. On the way home I would stop at a Motorway services for a break and get home by 4am. . . . . . . . .
Quite a lot happened after I started work at W H Smith. My wife got a part time job working in the staff canteen there. One evening, my eldest daughter came in with who, I thought, were two of her friends. After they had left her, Jane, my daughter, asked me if I knew who they were. It was after I'd said no that she dropped a bombshell, telling me one of them was my youngest daughter, Jennifer, who was living with her mother. This was in the September.
On the morning of Christmas Eve, we were getting ready to go to Smith's for our little Christmas do when there was a knock on the door. It was Jennifer. She had ran away from home. We took her down to Smith's with us and while she stayed there with my wife, I went to tell her mother where she was. To put it bluntly she couldn’t have cared less so Jennifer finished up spending Christmas with us. After the festive period I applied to the courts for custody of her and this was duly granted.
At work, I now had a regular run. Starting at Duston, I continued onto Harpole, Kislingbury Bugbrooke, Nether Heyford, Upper Heyford and Flore.From there I went on to Weedon, Newnham, Badby, Woodford Halse and Daventry where there were 4 shops. I then continued onto Welton, Long Buckby, East Haddon, and Holdenby then to the Bringtons before reaching my last call at Lower Harlestone.
When we had snow we normally doubled the drivers up. One day as I turned out of Bugbrooke the van slid into the ditch. Luckily a tractor was coming along and he pulled me out and towed me all the way to Nether Heyford.
Another time I was on my way to Holdenby when I came across a snow drift which I knew I wouldn’t be able to get through, so I reversed into a nearby gateway but ended up getting stuck, resulting in me having to walk to East Haddon where I was able to thumb a lift to Northampton. The recovery team went out later to get the van and bring it back to Northampton.
Another experience I had was when turned off of the A45 on my way to Newnham. As I drove over the brow of the hill, in my headlights I saw two fox cubs playing in the middle of the road. They froze in the headlights so I stopped, turned off the lights and turned them back on. The cubs had gone but it was wonderful to see them. I used to see badgers quite regularly because around Newnham there are quite a few badger setts. . . . . . . .
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| Weston Favell. St Johns Home |
In the heatwave of 1976 I would call in home on the way back to the depot pick up my two dogs They would go back to the warehouse with me. When I had finished work, I would walk down through Becket's Park to Ransome Road lake and go swimming. This was about 6.30 in the morning and the water was still warm. There I would swim out to the island and on the way back would put my hands on the dogs backs and they would paddle back with me.
I often took the dogs to Delapre Golf course at about 6.30 and you would be surprised at the number of golf balls I found. I used to take them to work and the manager would pay me 50p each.
We had a new night manager his name was Ian Skeels and I did not know at the time he would become my son in law. He was talking to my wife saying he was going on holiday on his own so my wife said why don't you ask Jennifer he did and she said yes and so the romance blossomed Although they are now divorced they still keep in touch and we often chat on facebook.. . . . . . . . . .
I was on this run for 14 years and made many friends with the newsagents. One of them was Mrs Blaney, who ran the Nether Heyford stores. She lived in a house just above the shop. I would normally turn up at 4.30 am and if it was poor weather, I would walk up to her house and help her to the shop because she was quite elderly. She would give me 40 cigarettes a week.
Another good friend was Jack Foster who ran the Headlands Store in Daventry. He had arthritic hands. He could not carry the papers so I would get there about 5.15 and whilst I was carrying the papers and magazines into the shop, he would be making me a cup of tea. Also when the price of cigarettes went up he would keep 400 back at the old price and at Christmas he always gave me 200. He now lives in a bungalow in Milton Keynes as he is now wheelchair bound I still keep in touch and go to see him when I can.
Another was Mrs Ellison who ran the paper shop from her house in Welton. She had a load of animals including dogs, rabbits and she also had a horse which was 16 hands high. In the holidays I often went over to see her and take my grand children and they loved sitting on the horse he never batted an eyelid just carried on munching his straw. They looked so small sitting on his back.
At Long Buckby there were two newsagents opposite each other. Mrs Cross ran the shop and Mrs Bauldie ran her business from her house doing deliveries outside the village. It was Mrs Bauldie who gave me my first fridge freezer
Before I finish talking about newsagents there are two I must mention. They operated the post office and store in Holdenby. Although they were in their eighties they would always be up when I arrived at about six o'clock One day when I arrived there was no sign of them. Due to their age I was worried in case they had been taken ill. When I got to East Haddon I rang the police and explained the situation. When I got back to the warehouse they had rung in to say they had overslept but thanked me for my concern. They said they were woken up by the blue lights flashing on the police car. . . . . . . .
When we had the big storm which brought down the trees, I could not get to all of my drops in the smaller villages like the Bringtons. I rang them and told them I would get to them as soon as I could.
It was twelve o'clock before I managed to get to Holdenby where they made me a cup of tea and gave me some bacon sandwiches. One day just after I left there, I thought I saw a dog in the grass so I went back to check and found it was a small deer with its young. It just lay in the long grass until I went away
On my way back to the Bringtons I would often pick up a council worker. The early bus had been cut out and there was no way he could get to work on time without me helping him in this way. He was so grateful that he used to give me at least half a dozen duck eggs every week as a means of payment.
Sometimes there would be a rail strike and the papers had to Travel by road. The train crew would help the warehouse staff clearing all the magazines etc and putting them in the vans and parking them around the back in the car park leaving the bays clear for the paper vans to back in and unload. As we had to unload them by hand and then pack them this would make us late running. Some of the newsagents would come in and pick up their own supplies
Other times there would be a paper which might be having a late print and would miss the train and have to come by road. When we got to Northampton we would be told what time this paper would be arriving so we would go out and deliver around town then go back and pick up the late newspaper with a sheet showing the amount each newsagent wanted and we would deliver in bulk
Now we were paid up to 4.00am at normal rate for delivering the papers we would be paid 3 hours overtime. If a paper missed the train we would be paid another three hours overtime if two papers missed we would be paid 3 hours for every newspaper title so we would be well in pocket and we never finished later than eight in the morning.
Ian had left Smith's and returned to Cambridge to become a manager for a local newsagent. My daughter Jennifer went with him and they managed to get a council house in Cambridge.
They wanted to get married and because she was under twentyone I had to give my written permission.When we got to the registrar's office Jennifer's mother had rung up objecting to the marriage but once the registrar had seen my written permission she allowed it to go ahead. . . . . . .
Sometimes a company will have a bad apple in the basket. On the paper train we had an Irish man who, on a Sunday when we caught the 9.30 pm to London, would get absolutely blotto and we would have help him pack because he was completely incapable doing it himself.
One particular Sunday, we were running late and he asked me to help him. I said no, as I had enough to do to get finished myself. He stopped what he was doing, packing my round and started on another run. When we got to Northampton, I loaded up my van with what he had done and went and delivered that. I then went back and loaded up the rest with the help of the train supervisor who was also our union rep. When we finished we went to see the manager to complain. It finished up with the Irish guy getting the sack.
It did not finish there. As you know there was a dispute going on at Wapping with the management of the Sun and as we were waiting for the train to London he came down to try to persuade us not to go but we took no notice as he had been drinking again. Two nights later whilst we were on our train in Euston a gang of thugs came up from Wapping and began to beat up our union rep, I tried to ring the transport police and I was grabbed round the neck and threatened. The police turned up about half an hour later, after the gang had gone. Because of the danger of being ambushed on my run I carried a pick handle with me until the dispute was settled. We often had people come down to Smith's to barrack us including a town councillor whose language was disgusting.
The other bad egg was our new night manager. He was an Indian and very unpleasant but I found out he was frightened of dogs so when I finished my run I went home and picked up my two dogs before going back to the warehouse. As soon as he saw my dogs he would go in the office and lock the door.
Magazines had started going missing from the shop and the manager was talking about bringing in our own security and having everyone searched. Now, I was buying a book every two weeks. I always paid the night manager but he never gave a receipt and we reported this to the area manager. One day we met away from the warehouse with the union rep and he gave me some marked money and told me to carry on buying the books as normal. One morning the night manager was met by security who searched his car and found bundles of magazines. Apparently he had been supplying a news agent with them. He was sacked and prosecuted.
It was becoming clear that in the following year the paper train would finish and the papers would come by road. As I was now 52, with a hernia and with some of the bundles weighing over half a hundredweight i.e. 56pounds(25kg) I decided to take early retirement so I went to see the manager. This happened on a Friday. When I went to see him on Monday he told me to go home as they owed me a total of eight weeks holiday.
This brings me up to 1987, which was the year my mother died. . . . .
One more thing before I close this chapter. Each Saturday I used to vary my run and on one occasion as I was travelling between the Bringtons, at about half past four, I noticed an elderly man who was waving a stick whilst standing in the ditch at the side of the road. At first I thought it might be a tramp, so I carried on to Great Brington to make my delivery. When I reached there, my concern for the man grew so I decided to go back and check that everything was alright. When I reached the spot where the man was, Ii could see he that he wasn't a tramp as he appeared to be too well dressed. I asked him what had happened and he said he had slipped and fell into the ditch. When I asked him where he was going, he said he was going to visit his brother in Leicester. That didn't ring true to me, so I attempted to get him out of the ditch but I had to stand on his feet to pull him up. He was extremely cold as the temperature was below freezing. Once I had managed to get him into the van, I decided to take him with me to Daventry. I made one delivery in the town going on to Bowen Square, where I knew the town's main police station was situated. I went inside and reported to the police what had happened. They came outside to see my passenger and when he told them his name they said they had been looking for him as he had been reported as missing from a nursing home the previous evening. They took him into the police station, gave him cup of tea and then took him back to the home. When I had finished my deliveries and returned to the depot, I telephoned the home and was told that he had gone missing like this before but they thanked me and assured me he was ok.
More to follow........
Hi Colin , I know you as I used to work at smiths as well ...seems an age ago. you used to woth with the union guy Doug ... there was also a guy call barry ... who always bought the tea . anyway if you feel like getting in contact just leave a message here and I will think of a way .. take care ... Tom
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