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On ...
The Great Newspaper Caper
Our dad was always on the lookout for something to sell.
He once sold a pair of Neds trousers because a friend had asked for a pair "just like those" - he just took them out of Neds wardrobe and sold them, no questions asked.
He once sold an antique clock that he had given to me as a wedding present because a friend had asked for one "just like that one". He just came around to my house and declared that I didn't really need his wedding present did I ? And then took it off the wall and sold it.
As far as he was concerned his regular job as an area sales manager was just a small portion of his gross income - the part of his income that he paid tax on. After he had done his 9 to 5 he was free to go about the rest of his business, which was no business of the taxman.
But he came unstuck in the 1974 Great Newspaper Caper.
During the course of his 9 to 5 job he visited a customer in Bradford who just happened to process waste paper. It was whilst he was there that he learned that waste paper was worth up to £50 per ton. Now everything had a price to our dad - he was always asking "how much was that then" whenever we had bought a new item, and "hang onto that, it's worth money you know" whenever we wanted to throw anything out, but even he was surprised to know that waste paper could be worth a staggering £50 a ton.
A few more questions and he had all the information that he needed, a ton of newspapers was roughly a Transit van full, and the company would accept a single one ton consignment from anyone with the nounce to collect that much unwanted paper.
By the time he had driven back to Leeds the plan had formed. He himself had the Daily Express delivered every morning and the Yorkshire Evening Post delivered every night, six days a week, thats twelve newspapers, plus a Saturday Evening Green Final and a Sunday People - fourteen papers a week just to our house. Now if he asked all his friends to save their papers, and if our mother asked all her friends at "Bronte House" (see "On ... Bronte Ladies" chapter) to save their newspapers, it would only be a few weeks before he could hire the Transit van and be off to the waste paper merchant and his first (of many) fifty quid.
He asked everybody to save their newspapers.
Naturally people wanted to know why, as recycling was unheard of in 1974. He soon learned that telling people "I'm making some money for myself" would meet with a cool response, and so everyone was told "we are raising money for a good cause" - no-one ever asked what the good cause was.
Relations and neighbours were the first to be involved and soon a regular flow of newpapers were dumped on our doorstep, all to be neatly tied into bundles and stacked at the back of the garage. His sales reps and service engineers from his 9 to 5 job were also roped in and we were regularly called out of the house when he arrived home from work to empty his overflowing car boot of assorted Daily Star's, Daily Mirror's and other newspapers of the working classes.
Even the ladies from Bronte House chipped in with their one paper per day (they all shared one newspaper), and a Womans Realm. For some strange reason the Ladies from Bronte House were always referred to as "ladies" even though one of them was actually a man - Roy Dickinson, an eighteen stone broken faced semi-professional rugby league player, who wasn't called "lady" to his face but who was collectively included in the Bronte Ladies, I don't think that the Womans Realm was his though.
My brother and I of course had to play our part in the scheme and were encouraged to bring back old newspapers from our friends houses, or to retrieve them from litter bins and bus seats.
I myself hit the jackpot when I discovered that a friend who lived nearby had a weekly newspaper round which was becoming a pain in the backside to her. I offered my services as a newspaper collector and every Friday would call on the way back from school and pick up her round of 120 Leeds Weekly News, then stagger round the corner with them and dump them in our garage.
No-one in Cookridge received a Leeds Weekly News for months whilst our scheme was on the go, occasionally I would arrive early at her house and have to wait for the woman who distributed them to arrive, greeting her with a cheery "Hello again", before rushing around to our house to dump them in the garage.
After a couple of months it was apparent that there would be more to the task than first suspected. The newspapers were rolling in at a great rate, hardly a day went by without a fresh bundle of newsprint appearing on the doorstep, and the pile at the back of the garage had reached the roof and a fresh pile started, but still we could see that we were some way short of our target and that it would take several more months to accumulate even one ton.
With this thought nagging at the back of our minds, collecting newspapers soon became secondary to my brother and I, and eventually even our dad had to admit that it wasn't the golden goose that he thought it should be, his mind being finally turned by the revelation from his waste paper merchant customer that the waste paper market had plummeted in recent months and old newspapers were now only worth £12 a ton - this being mainly due to the fact that the Blue Peter appeal that year had encouraged millions of kids to sent their old newspapers to the BBC to be recycled into guide dogs.
Of course this left one small problem - if we weren't going to collect newspapers any more, and we didn't have enough paper in the garage to weigh in at the waste merchant, then what were we going to do with the huge stack of paper that had taken over our garage?
The answer came a few weeks later on a slip of paper that was pushed through the letter box - the Cookridge Village Scout Troop would be visiting in the next few days to collect old newspapers "for a good cause".
Sure enough a few days later a car appeared at the bottom of the street, boot open, with several little scouts popping in and out of each house and returning to the car with the odd Green Final or an old knitting pattern. We stood in eager anticipation for their arrival at our doorstep - if they were true to their word they were going to need something a little more substantial than an Austin Allegro to carry away all our newspapers.
A few short minutes later an eager little spotty faced scout, smartly attired in his khaki uniform, necktie and woggle knocked on the door,
"Have you got any old newspapers mister?" he asked of our dad, unsuspectingly.
"Yes, I think we have a few in the garage son, ask your mates to give you a hand"
Soon several little scouts were lined up on the drive and the Allegro was parked out on the street, the scoutmaster driver peering through the passenger window to see better what was going on with his scout pack at number 31.
The garage door was slowly lifted up to reveal only half a garage, containing the usual deckchairs and lawnmoor - the rest of the garage was full from floor to ceiling with newspaper after newspaper, stacked high and stinking by now of damp as the roof leaked slightly.
A collective "Wow," and "Oh my God," and "Corr mister do you own a newspaper shop or summat ?" arose from the assembled scouts, followed by a car door slamming as the scout master came to see what all the fuss was about. The look on his face as he stood there, a middle aged, pot-bellied, greasy man dressed in khaki shirt and shorts, long socks (with green elastic tabs), necktie and woggle, was worth bottling and selling as the funniest expression of shock that you are likely to see outside of a Warner Bros cartoon.
You could hear his brain churning over, thinking
"How the hell am I going to get all this in my Allegro?"
followed by "At last - our answer to the new scout hut" followed by
"The bastards want us to clear out their garage 'cos the bottoms fallen out of the waste paper market".
He was of course correct - Cookridge Village Scouts provided our solution, and in the nick of time, as we were considering how long it would take each of us to dump one newspaper per day in each waste bin on each bus stop on Green Lane, or whether it would be possible to deliver as a single overnight hit, all seven months worth of Leeds Weekly News to every house in Cookridge.
The scouts made two trips in their old mini-bus with many, many scouts and cubs to carry a few small bundles each, but eventually they emptied our garage for us and ended our ambition to corner the market in waste paper, we came close, ever so close to it - I am sure that for several months that year no old newspapers were to be found on bus seats or bins anywhere in Leeds 16, but ultimately we were gazzumped by John Noakes, Val Singleton and Peter Purves and their bloody guide dog appeal.
As a postscript it was many, many months before we were finally rid of the reputation as newspaper collectors. We would often return home to find a bundle of newspapers waiting on the doorstep which would end up on the garden bonfire, and from time to time some gentle old lady would turn up with a neatly tied bundle of Evening Posts to be greeted at the door with "We don't bloody want any more bloody newspapers, get rid of them somewhere bloody else"
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