Free Papers

Free papers, right. What the fuck's going on there?

Call me old fashioned, but in the olden days a boy about 14 years old used to ride round on a bike at 6 in the morning and deliver papers through your letter box. Every Wednesday your mum would pay the local newsagent, and at Christmas that same poor boy, the one who got up at 5am every day for a year in all sorts of weather, would be given 10p by my parents for his trouble. You could buy a lot with 10p in those days, so everyone was happy.

Now when we were at school we used to play a game called British Bulldog. Basically, the whole school stood in a line across the middle of the playground and you had to force your way through to the other side whilst they used whatever means they liked to stop you. It was rough and got banned in the end. For some reason I was quite good at it.

Now I use those same skills every day when walking from Piccadilly Station to the office. The reason. Free fucking papers. I swear they can't even give the fucking rags away, so they employ hordes of down and outs and illegal immigrants, immune to the fucking hideous Manchester climate, to hand them out.

They don't just leave a pile of them to be picked up. Oh no. They thrust them in front of you as you walk through the rain. I counted four of the bastards this morning. It's like running the gauntlet in Gladiators, but with no hope of bumping into Ulrikakakakakakaaaaa at the end of it.

And another thing, why is it called the Manchester Evening News when it plaining is nothing of the sort because the first edition must be out at like 6am. And the real loser in all of this is the poor paper boy, who won't be getting his Christmas box this year because some out of work plumber from Poland has nicked his job. Bastard!