The Awakening

A Memory of Locksbottom.

On the right of the photograph the second shop belonged to Arthur Sansom, the Newsagents and Confectioners. It has a sign board above the shop front: PICTURE POST.

In the Easter holidays of 1959 at the age of 14½, I took my first paid job.

I became a newspaper girl in Locks Bottom, Farnborough, Kent, for Arthur Sansom the local Newsagent and Confectioner, delivering papers, journals and magazines to the inhabitants of Farnborough Park (behind the row of shops on the left-hand-side of the road). The area covered consisted of: Elm Walk, Park Avenue, The Glen, Meadow Way and Sunnydale. Another two roads of large detached houses with extensive gardens were being constructed: Hazel Grove and Wood Way, but I didn’t deliver there. I soon learnt that many people had several newspapers, especially on a Sunday. I was curious about a paper printed on pink newsprint, something I had never seen before. I learnt that this was The Financial Times and many houses took it. My Dad told me that Farnborough Park was where many Company Directors lived, the exclusive houses in large grounds being the first development of its kind in the south east out of London. It was easy to get into the City from Bromley South Station although most of the inhabitants had their own car which I might see from time to time in the driveways. Whether it was the sheer novelty of earning some money for the first time – 10/- a week - or whether it was the experience of marching up to unknown people’s posh houses’ letterboxes, or even striking up occasional conversations so early in the morning, I do not know. I do know I learnt many things; memories of this fortnight have remained with me all my life.

Arthur Sansom was almost as ancient as my mother’s father (who’d died a few years earlier) somewhere in his seventies. His name was above his shop. He was slow to move, short, a man of few words and some gesticulations. He had a saggy middle and an even saggier cardigan of indeterminate grey. His hair was grey, lank and longish pushed back and over but always falling forwards curtaining his eyes. His trousers, even greyer, hung from below his middle, bunching over his slippers, dragging behind his heels, leaving threadbare edges and dirt. He shuffled from front to back of the little room at the rear of the shop. Sidling between the counter and many boxes on the floor in the gloom was not without hazard. Sometimes one or other of us knocked over a box they were so close packed and intruding into the gangway between. There was a fusty smell about the place, consistent with an aroma wafting in the wake of Mr Sansom. He‘d sometimes be in the room at the rear of the shop when I arrived, standing, bending over a great stack of the days’ newspapers, writing with a stub of pencil to identify certain papers with the potential recipient’s name, or the name of a house. As the pile grew shorter, he’d sit down to rest his legs and back. I soon learnt that not every paper was marked: I was expected to remember customers’ names or roads or house names instantly. The only thing he ever said to me was on a Sunday as he gesticulated towards my mailbag (dirty white, bulky and heavy in its own right before the papers were added), “That’s heavy” he’d say lugubriously. Statement of fact. No allowance for a five foot nothing eight stone weakling. Once, he gave me a single cellophane wrapped toffee from the shop. A present indeed. (Never accept a sweet from a stranger. But Mr Sansom wasn’t a stranger, was he?)

I went from our house in Bassetts Way to Locks Bottom, about seven minutes by bike, at six o’clock in the morning. There were no cars on the roads then; petrol rationing was still a close memory and the price of cars prohibitive. Public transport was everything. I’d never been up so early before; swinging the heavy bag over my shoulder in order to cycle across the road into Elm Walk in Farnborough Park, a gated road, was not usually possible. It was a question of careful balancing of the bag, with its papers slipping internally this way, that way, simultaneously on to the saddle and handlebars such that it was still possible to steer the bike and support the papers with ones arms. I did not have the height or weight to balance the load and had a job not to over-balance with the eccentric bag of papers. I had to make two journeys each day there were so many papers to be delivered. It was a tough job for not much money but I was ‘standing in’ for my close friend Margaret’s brother Peter while he went abroad (to help him become fluent in German, fares funded by the paper-round money), so I knew I only had to survive a fortnight. Peter would have lost the job if he’d taken time off, so would I oblige? He took me round for a week including a Sunday to learn the ropes; what to do and especially what not to do. If one did something wrong and a customer complained, Mr Sansom would be angry, one might lose the job.

The route I took to deliver the papers had already been established in two halves. Elm Walk and Park Avenue were first (and at right angles to each other); I then returned to Mr Sansom’s for the second load. These were for The Glen and Meadow Way with a few in Sunnydale. There was a strictly observed etiquette in delivering papers in Farnborough Park. Each house had its own front drive. One had to learn which drive could be cycled up and which not; which path had to be strictly adhered to and which flower beds could be jumped over to get to the next house quicker. This last was rare because of the length of most drives, but occasionally one could take a short cut to the next house. The paper round had to be done quickly to get through the sheer number and quantity of deliveries; you couldn’t dawdle or stop to admire something. It was not a job for the curious, unless done on the trot, however cumbersome the bag.

There were gates to unlock and re-lock; none were to be left open. It was bliss if they had no gate at all. Some had to be lifted to make the lock catch, some slipped and clicked, oiled and efficient, others would refuse to latch and took time to manoeuvre. Sometimes fingers became trapped and were pinched or squeezed an elbow or a knee would be banged, hopping and wincing the only remedies. The bag of papers in the rough, stiff bag bumping heavily into my side, knocking me off balance at the beginning of the delivery, less so towards the end as the bag became lighter. Always one had to be silent, holding one’s breath if the bike skewed on the gravel, or pebbles crunched. I learnt there was no number 13 in any of the five roads of the park. There were a few numbers missing all together where they had not yet been built or had been demolished. Some houses had to be approached via the back, although most from the front. There were porches to negotiate with additional doors, dogs to avoid (and not to make them bark), thorny bushes to scrape by and slippery surfaces to beware of, especially if it rained. Moss on brick or stone was treacherous. And one could not let the papers get wet or they might rip as they went through the letterboxes.

The letterboxes. The Letterboxes. Oh…Some houses had papers in the week but not the weekend, or on Sundays but not in the week, or weekends only. There were many letterboxes that were far too small for the number of papers that had to be pushed through, right through, or halfway, or left on the mat inside a porch. On Sundays it was necessary to make several forays into the recesses to get them all through. The holding of one’s breath as the first batch smashed on to a stone-tiled floor, hoping it didn’t wake the occupants, or cause the dog to bark - warranting a complaint and reprimand from Mr Samson - leaving the last batch as demanded by the customer, half-in or through.

Some letterboxes were stiff and took agonising minutes of pushing and shoving to get them to yield sufficiently open to take the wadge of papers. Some pivoted at the top, or sideways left or right, or swung from the horizontal along the top edge. Some rattled noisily, others squeaked rustily, others were spring-loaded, snapping at one’s fingers, catching the knuckles and leaving them sore. If the papers had to be pushed all the way through you had to make sure that the letter flap had come down again so as not to cause a draught – that, too, could result in a complaint. (Mr Sansom did not want a complaint – he might lose a customer and his profit decline, we understood). Getting the flap down was not always easy, requiring the fingers to be inserted and curled around the flap enticing it down. It took time. Letterboxes were up high, down low, on the left or right, in little boxes cunningly disguised so it was easy to miss them; some were hidden in climbers up the front of the house, some missing altogether until I knew where to find them. It was certainly a physical job. And all the time in which to make a noise, to let a porch door bang shut in the wind, to forget something, or deliver the wrong papers to the wrong house.

I must have been acceptable because Peter asked me to do the holiday weeks while he went abroad or studied for his exams. The first Christmas I delivered the papers early one morning I encountered a lady on her front path (fortunately I’d left my bike at the front where the gate should have been but wasn’t, as I knew the protocol for this house). She said she’d been waiting for me and said how much she appreciated the delivery, handing me a 6d. It was Boxing Day but I had never heard of a Christmas Box. I was alarmed, “I don’t usually deliver your papers, I’m just doing it for the holidays for a friend”, I said. “Then you’re the lucky one”, she said, “it’s Boxing Day”. Several people left sixpences with a slip of paper saying “Paper-boy”. I asked Mr Samsom about it. He just grunted. This girl put the money in the missionary box the next Sunday at the Methodist Church, thinking it was the next best box. Perhaps I should have waited and given it to Peter, but I didn’t think of that then and then it was too late. The second year he told me to keep it.

I knew a few people in Farnborough Park through my parents. I remember the Vickers (who gave my sister her first bike) and the Astburys (I met Mr Astbury early one morning as he was about to get into his large beige saloon car, and I said “Good morning Mr Astbury” but it must have been because he did not recognise me, out of social context or something, but he looked away and said nothing), and Mrs Sheila Stead who was always politely friendly but still rather distant. My best friend Cheryll (whose father had a vintage Rolls Royce, the envy of everyone, in which we were sometimes conveyed from place to place sitting grandly in the back waving like the Queen) had lived in the last house to be built at the end of Sunnydale, opposite The Spinney, but she’d just moved away to a village near Canterbury. I’d cycle that way home sometimes, just to remind myself of the good times we’d had together.

I learnt to read the papers as I took them out of the bag, folding them ready to go into the letterboxes. We didn’t have a television, couldn’t afford a newspaper and sometimes were without electricity (the bill hadn’t been paid again) so I couldn’t listen to the radio. Besides, it was the pictures that brought it all alive. I soon realised that each paper had a sort of style, they covered stories in particular ways. The Daily Mirror had big headlines, short snappy headings. The Times was printed in rather old-fashioned type, was much more subdued but more interesting. If I wanted to know more about something I read The Times or The Daily Telegraph. I only read the front page, knowing that I would be out of a job if I creased a paper or it looked as if it had been read (second-hand), and it was really Peter’s job so I had no right to prejudice it.

Some stories were compelling. The Daily Mirror and the Daily Sketch wrote stories about famous people, the Times things like the political situation. My parents had originally taken the Daily Sketch but also read The Daily Telegraph - when they could afford a paper. No-one I knew read The Financial Times; I could not make head nor tail of it. My Dad said it was about Stocks and Shares for wealthy people, like those in Farnborough Park. Very few people had the Daily Mail; a few took the Daily Express. I did not know why. I heard that Tramps preferred the Times; apparently it had the best insulating properties (between them and the pavement). Fish and Chips in the Village were wrapped in newspaper, the Mirror and Sketch mostly because they were better at absorbing the grease if any went through the plain newsprint (the first wrapping) and were the right size (not that we ever had such a culinary experience). The only story I remember from the early years was about Margaret Lockwood, the film star. I had heard of her because we used to chant “Margaret Lockwood is a star, S – t – a – r” in the playground at Primary School (playing with two tennis balls against the wall), becoming absorbed in the story of this lady. I seem to remember there was some discussion about a daughter. I was slightly puzzled as to why there were stories about ladies – Marilyn Monroe (there was the announcement of a new film: Some Like it Hot), Jayne Mansfield and Diana Dors (the English Marilyn Monroe apparently) but none about men. I was sure there were men who were as well-known as film stars although I had only seen films at my Uncle Ted’s house (he was involved in the Vintage Film Circle from an early date) time. I did not know if Charlie Chaplin counted as a film star or not. I had seen silent movies of Rudolph Valentino who had died before the war and Errol Flynn in Captain Blood. But they did not seem to be as interesting to readers - which was all it was really about. For the first time I read the news. I began to see what was going on in the world even though I did not understand much. I became aware how some countries in the world linked together and were not just areas in an atlas. History began to unfurl itself in my mind. I’d heard about the Suez Crisis from my Dad and now there was the news about the building of the Aswan Dam (my Dad was an engineer and mightily interested in that Dam). Fidel Castro’s Premiership in Cuba filled some front pages. I did not understand the implications of it but the immediacy of Press photographs – albeit murky black and white and poor quality in the main – did much to help comprehension in the absence of television: I could visualise these places, those people, that situation. I was slowly becoming aware.

While walking between the houses (having left my bike under a hedge and having finished the front-page news) I’d make up stories in my head about their occupants – perhaps driven by the somewhat lurid details I sometimes read about on front pages. Little things that might give me clues as to the characters within, or reveal some aspect of their lives from the type of car they had – if it wasn’t put away in the garage, often larger than our entire house. Observations such as these could turn a story one way or the other. Sometimes it was the changes I noticed, like the way they changed plants in the garden according to season, or how well tended the lawn was, how often the grass was mown, in stripes or all-over, the knowledgeable pruning of the abundant rose bushes, whether the flower beds had cut edges or remained untrimmed (not often). In the autumn you could usually tell who had a regular gardener or whether they did it themselves by the length of time the leaves lay on the path or lawn, how often the weeding was done, whether fertiliser or manure was applied at Easter-time and/or autumn. Some of the gardens were manicured and municipal like Bromley Library Gardens, with red, white and blue bedding plants laid out during the early summer in formal rows or patterns. Or they might be woodland or wild, like different parts of the Park between Lakeside Drive and Beverley Road on the way to Keston Mark and once part of the Common, and which we knew very well. There’d be cottage gardens for some houses that looked like Tudor ones but that I knew were only built about a quarter of a century earlier. There were massive trees in some gardens you would have expected on a common and that had been there upwards of half a century and I realised that the houses had been built round them accordingly, or rather, in the spaces between. The trees must have been part of Farnborough Common that now only bordered the Park on the north side. I loved it when it snowed and I was the first person up to the front doors, my footprints wending up and down the paths and along the roads, picking up my bike where I’d left it waiting for me to return on the roundabout route round the park, the snow too deep to cycle on the unfrequented roads that time of morning

It was always so quiet in Farnborough Park. Mr Sansom was quiet, too. Sometimes I’d tell him about things I saw, thought or read about. To be conversationable, even companionable. He never said anything but he didn’t seem uninterested or disinterested or impatient. He simply listened (body language attentive), carried on marking up the stack of papers, never lifted his eyes, never changed his pace, while on a Sunday helped me get the bag on to my bike. I was never late, always polite and listened to his instructions as to who was on holiday, who was back, any deviation from the usual order, and so on. Sometimes a customer would take The Financial Times for a short while, or another paper, I understood, for a story that was being followed. It occurred to me that Mr Samson must get up very early indeed in order to mark up the papers. After all, he had all the other papers in Locks Bottom to mark up as well. He was never late either, never in a hurry, just always plodding on doing his job. I wondered how long he had been doing it, whether he actually liked it or not, whether he had a wife to give him breakfast when he was done, were there children. Did they do paper rounds?

I never found out any of the answers. I stopped being Peter’s stand-in for the Farnborough Park paper round when he went to University in the autumn of 1960. I believe Mr Samson died in1963, aged 77. Susan Tebby April 2015