the means of escape (part 3)

From when I was thirteen to when I was eighteen, every day, in whatever weather, I got up just before six to get to the newspaper shop (Forbuoys on the Broadway, now a McColl's, rather than King's on Station Road) for six when my pile was usually just about ready. Despite the weight of the bags the round only claimed one bicycle - unfortunately my dad's old Raleigh Wayfarer, which suffered a crimped rear wheel when the mudguard stay detached from the mudguard and travelled round with the tyre until the reduced distance caused by the mudguard bolt hole being below the axle caused it to be pulled tight against the rim. If I had a puncture and there were no spare bikes to be used, I ran and walked. On Sundays, I sometimes did two rounds, each with two bags of thick Sunday newspapers, with the second bag of each being dumped by car on a friendly drive or porch by one of the newsagents. Most of the time my weekday round started just across the street from the newsagent and finished near my house, briefly finishing at it when my dad was receiving only the second Guardian of the round. Most of the route were Mails, Expresses, Telegraphs and Timeses, so the local breakdown of election results and the referendum were no surprise. My usual Sunday rounds included much of the weekday route with various additions including Cromwell Avenue, Arnhem Way and the new-at-the-time Ridings and/or heading along Tor-o-Moor Road, popping up Tarleton Avenue and Tor-o-Moor Gardens to Kirby Lane then through the still-relatively-new Woodland Drive, which I sometimes reached or left through the little cut-through from Tor-o-Moor Road opposite Tarleton Avenue. It now bears No Cycling signs, possibly because it's now really narrow due to the surrounding houses reinstalling their fences to leave a path barely as wide as a metre in places. On weekends, when I'd finished, I'd sometimes pop to the Kirkby Lane woods for a climb of a tree or to scootle around the nascent dips and ramps before heading home for something to eat, unless it was summer in which case there might be swimming club at the pool in the hour before the public session began. On weekdays I'd usually be done before seven, leaving plenty of time to leave the house at 08:11 to be at the bus stop in time.
When I started I think I was paid around £5.50 for the weekday round and £2.50 for Sundays. Every couple of Saturdays I would pop to the village branch of the relevant building society, where the amount paid in was handwritten in Biro by the cashier until they were upgraded to a wee printing machine. Eventually, with the weekly pay augmented by christmas tips, I withdrew a nervous wodge from the Lincoln branch, then walked across town to the Music Box, clutching my bag tightly, to buy my guitar.

My parents are preparing to sell up and move to Edinburgh, leaving the village I grew up in and in which they've remained, to which we first moved forty-one years ago. As it'll be the last chance to visit the place when there's somewhere to stay and someone to visit, I have a wee list of things to pop past and look at. With the pandemic and suchlike we've not been here since 2017; there are several whole new sections of village which were mostly empty field when I last saw them, but the bits I remember are fairly well embedded, even though I've been away longer than I lived here. A few house names have changed, a few letterboxes and doors are hopefully different and there's the occasional completely new road or house here and there but it's slightly astounding when cycling the route that I can still mostly remember which houses I delivered to and which I didn't.