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Paper Round.... By Car....

(9 posts)
  • Started 12 years ago by Wilmington's Cow
  • Latest reply from cb

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  1. Wilmington's Cow
    Member

    Saturday morning I was heading out for a spin on the bike and saw a teenage lad out on his paper round. Nothing unusual in that, and sadly I don't think there's too much unusual in the fact that his mum was in a Renault Clio at the side of the road, engine running, sorting out his next paper.

    Okay, there might be a reason she was driving him round his paper round, but I've seen this kind of thing a lot since the days when I was a paper boy. Seems along the same lines as more and more kids being driven to school.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  2. Claggy Cog
    Member

    'ealf and safety...cannot have the poor dears getting muscles, exercise or damaging themselves carrying a load of newspapers! Sign of the times! The money by the way is shockingly bad...way, way below the minimum wage.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  3. DaveC
    Member

    I know a solicitor in Strathaven who does just this. Bonkers!!

    Posted 12 years ago #

  4. Wilmington's Cow
    Member

    Got to be 16 or over to get minimum wage.

    I remember my very first pay packet for my paper round being £11, and it was Wimbledon fortnight, so I bought a tennis racket.

    As soon as I started a paper round my pocket money was stopped. £2.15 a week, which just happened to be the exact price of an Airfix model kit. Ah, them were the days. Living on a council estate, growing up with little, that salary for the paper round felt like a fortune (and I was on a rota for getting in at 5am every third week for a week which got us an extra tenner or something a week).

    Posted 12 years ago #

  5. Lezzles
    Member

    My brother-in-laws father used to do this for his foster son. It was because said teenager would chuck them in the bin if he didn't drive him round. It was meant to be part of teaching him a lesson that hard work will bring rewards.

    Don't think it worked particularly well.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  6. kaputnik
    Moderator

    which just happened to be the exact price of an Airfix model kit.

    Heh, that was my measure of how much pocket money I thought I should get too :) although it were more like £3.99 in my day for your basic single-engine 1/72 kit. It took a good many weeks if not months to save up for something like a Lancaster or the Sunderland.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  7. chdot
    Admin

    1/72

    For those who don't talk pre-metric that's 1" to 6'.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  8. kaputnik
    Moderator

    1/72

    For those who don't talk pre-metric that's 1" to 6'.

    The original plastic-bag Airfixes were sold as 1/72nd scale. I'm not sure they ever used imperial measurement to describe them?

    I never did get to the bottom of why the land vehicles and little soldiers came in 1/76 and were therefore marginally incompatible. I had a vague inkling it was because they were made to model railway scales.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  9. cb
    Member

    Model railway OO gauge is 1/76

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OO_gauge

    Only found out the other day on a BBC4 Prog about model railways (repeat?) that Hornby originally marketed this as Hornby Dublo. So did OO come from that name or was it the other way around.

    Posted 12 years ago #

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