What I learnt delivering newspapers

At the age of 25 I got my first paper round. What better way to spend the last few weeks before heading off to Japan than wandering around the local streets, providing the town with an essential service. I should have known when I called the distribution centre and they asked if it was for a kid or me that I wasn’t the right person for the job. Thirty-four degrees Celsius, eight and a half hours of walking, one litre of water and 570 papers later I understood why only children should have a paper round. There are a lot better ways to earn a hundred bucks.

However, with plenty of time to observe and think I did learn some invaluable lessons.

Wind is the paper deliverer’s worst enemy

Annoying, yes?

It’s a glorious, cloudless Sunday morning. You’ve just had a leisurely stroll down the street to collect the newspaper. Perhaps you’ve picked up a coffee and a croissant on the way. Now you’re settling down outside on the deck to enjoy your delicious treats and to catch up with what’s been happening in the world. Your newspaper gives a rustle; you sense a breeze. You place your coffee on the edge of the paper to make sure it doesn’t blow away. The next moment your coffee is spreading all over the News and the Sport has blown over the back fence. And chances are, if your croissant is light and delicate it’s blown off the table straight into the mouth of your patiently waiting dog.

This is what your paper delivery person has to deal with every time they try and put your local paper in your letterbox, albeit without the coffee, croissant and relaxing surrounds. They do battle with Mother Nature, taming cheeky papers trying to escape one page at a time. No number of expletives seems to fix the problem.

A letterbox makes a house

Now that's a letterbox.

A builder in Barwon Heads couldn’t get more work if they lived in [insert war-ravaged city that has been recently bombed, here]. There are new houses going up on every street, each appearing to be at the furthest edge of modern architecture. Oblique angles and water views abound. They are more works of art than houses. Then the proud owners go and put a hollow brick on a pole at the front of their property and call it a letterbox. Why, when you’ve just spent hundreds of thousands of dollars building your great Australian dream would you ruin the look of your house by putting a crappy little tin box that you picked up on the weekend from Bunnings in front of it all?

Actually, come to think of it I’ve never really looked at someone’s letterbox unless I’m putting something in it. So maybe only the postman will notice.

Newspaper ink is like a George Foreman Grill

Handling newspapers for eight and a half hours leads to black hands. The ink gets into your pores leaving your hands and fingers smooth and shiny. If I was picked up by the police and fingerprinted I would have been fingerprint-less like George Foreman, who allegedly burnt off his fingerprints in his eponymous grill.

Please don’t find it necessary to go and find these lessons out for yourself.