Kiosk

As I've mentioned here before, I spent part of my childhood, between the ages of eight and twelve, in Hong Kong. I have some quite clear yet disjointed memories from living there: walking from our home on Mount Kellett along to the Peak School; trips out on the bank's junk in the South China Seas; travelling across to Kowloon on the Star Ferry; trekking down to Aberdeen; pulling the shutters across the french windows and camping in the living room during the stronger monsoons; and, well, you get the picture.

But Hong Kong has changed an awful lot over the years and when the opportunity to go back has arisen, I've avoided it; I'm too worried by the prospect of my childhood memories of living there being over-written by a transient, holiday experience.

Sometimes I think that's a daft worry to have but that exact phenomenon occurred today when I got to Worcester Park station. I'd already decided to take a photo of the paper kiosk where I once worked and to use it for today's post but when I got there, I couldn't work out quite where it used to be. Certainly it occupied the space where the current kiosk is but it extended all the way to the platform. The serving area was perhaps twice as big but maybe more to the middle.

I worked there for two or three years, I think, maybe a bit longer. At first the owner was a big, bearded man called Frank. I'd get up at quarter to six everyday except for Sundays, which were an hour later, cycle to the shop for six and pick up the papers to do my paper round. One winter it snowed and so my dad took me 'round in the car each morning until the snow cleared. I remember afterwards that Frank gave him a pack of cigars.

New houses were added to the round but the wages - five pounds a week - never changed. After a couple of years I was promoted and I prepared the rounds for the other paper boys and girls, numbering the papers. I'd also work through the stacks of flat papers, folding each one in half and then put them out on the counter for sale to the commuters. As one does, I developed a fluid, manual mechanism for doing this, so I could whizz through a stack of papers without thinking while chatting to Frank's son-in-law, also called Frank, who had taken over by this time.

That all came to an end quite abruptly one morning. Frank told me that he couldn't afford to run the paper delivery service any longer and gave my my wages plus an additional fiver. I wasn't that disappointed to be honest. I'd had enough of getting up so early in the morning and falling asleep every day when I got in from school. I'd have been working at the off-licence by this time, which was better paid and provided far more opportunity for sitting on a stool, reading and listening to the radio.

I still feel a pang of kinship when I see a paper boy* out on his round. I think it's harder to drag yourself out of bed as a teenager and the fact that you had to go out no matter what the weather was gruelling. Ugh, those dark, winter mornings. I think if my son wanted to do a paper round, I'd try to talk him out of it and maybe just give him more pocket money!

*I can't remember the last time I saw a girl delivering papers.