Rang a bell with me did that.

I wanted to go on to art college or further education after leaving school. My mother took me in my school uniform to a finance type company in town just days after leaving school and I was given a clerical job on the merits of my maths ability. All wage went to my mum and she gave me back the bus fare.

Porters Norbury, a newspaper and sweet shop, as a Saturday girl at 13. I loved it. I knew everyone in the community, what they smoked, what they read and their sugary preferences.

Sadly I know of at least 1 person where this still happens. Now, the family are in poor times, but his father (old school South African, extremely racist too, awful man.) basically sent/sends him to work on a farm co-op (Monsanto) in the summer, then his parents run into "hard times" and take the money.

You have to pay for your keep.

All due respect, I don't think 14 year olds need to "earn their keep." For the most part parents have a duty to care for their children until high school graduation.

Since I never got any spend, at age 12 first proper job was as a afternoon paperboy, which I kept till I was 17. Walking route for the first year, took almost one-hour, from leaving home & back again - for the reason my route was the posh houses that were well spaced apart without a bike, 10 shillings/week. Five shillings handed over to the household budget.

No tips ever from the posh folks

At 13 I so needed a bike. The deal was my mother bought a new (should have been a used one) which I had to pay back out of the paper route wages. The bike allowed me to do both morning (before school) and after school delivery.

Morning papers were 364 days a year, no delivery on Good Friday.

Late afternoon papers 6-days a week, with no delivery on Good Friday.

Our son here in Canada at age 11 (late 80's) started delivering the community paper, it included collecting the money.

At 13 he added the Sunday Sun newspaper. He did it all by himself with no parental support helping him do the deliveries ever.

Daughter worked at Zellers from age 15 till she finished uni

Both kids paid their way through post secondary education.

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totally disagree, but then you knew it coming from me

My first job was when I was in 6th form I worked at BHS on Saturdays and school holidays. Although I went to grammar school...Uni was never part of the equation...much to the disappointment of my maths and accounts teachers. We lived in a council house and money was tight to say the least. My first full time job was working in an office for Sheffield Education Committee. I hated it.

You can disagree all you want, but I think the law would now say otherwise (Though admittedly it wouldn't be very helpful in that most kids wouldn't take their parents to court.)

Postsecondary is obviously a different beast, parents cant be expected to support their kids through that if they don't want to. Though in ON I don't believe the OSAP system should be based off of parents' income as it is currently.

I can certainly believe that. I'm surprised they didn't charge you for using the path to the front door.


You appear to be describing a time when there were no papers on xmas day or boxing day as well as Friday, Sunday and Monday at Easter (not 100% but many bank hols were no paper days) and possibly a couple of other days too.

The xmas eve supplements used to see me from the 24th to when the papers reappeared on the 27th. Then at some stage papers were out boxing day but still not xmas day. There wasn't anywhere open to get one.

I was certain papers on those two days other than Good Friday (something that sticks in my mind), then again, it was late 50' early 60's - it was so long ago....

From post #36, I kept that same single speed (no up/down gears) bike in good working condition till I left the UK for Canada - sold it for a few shillings to a kid a few doors down. Surprised Mother never asked for the money

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Aside from a year or so delivering papers and a couple of years as a "charity pools" collector, my first "real" job was labouring in a warehouse for United Biscuits aka McVitie's, Crawford's, KP, and Terry's.

It was hard work but paid well, with plenty of overtime. Despite the high unemployment rate they found it very difficult to find reliable staff, and so I was welcomed back each summer I was at uni, and I graduated with money in the bank.

I worked there for an aggregate of almost two years. Ah, good times!

I never saw a bike that didn't have three gears.

My Tricycle never had gears.

Actually, now I think a bit more, I hired a bike with fixed gear (pedal backwards to brake) in The Netherlands but who needs gears when it's so flat.

It was not a tricycle BTW, it was 2-wheeler 'sit up & beg' type like the Policemen had. No gears, it included front & back brakes.

Reference point for the 'yoof'

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sit-up-and-beg

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My first bicycle, bought for my nineth birthday, had its three-speed Sturmey-Archer wheel removed by the shop, at the instruction of my father. ..... My next bike had a five speed derailleur, at my insistence.