Daft Old Duffer returns. Guest opinion articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication. Ed
I started off in the traditional way – before school paper round, double round on Sundays, all for eight shillings (40p) per week.
But I had to give that up because, although I got up early enough, the papershop didn’t and I began to get into trouble for being late to school.
So I sank back to an empty pockets lifestyle for a time (Mum either never heard of, or didn’t believe in, pocket money).
A new collecting craze
Then a sudden craze for stamp collecting sprung up among the first-formers and boys began buying and selling the little scraps of paper.
I had my very own stamp album, a gift from an aunt and complete with its own sparse display of foreign exotica. I unearthed it, took it to school and to my unbelieving delight sold all its contents over a few heady days, for the unheard of sum of one silver shilling and one silver sixpence. Or seven and a halfpence in modern day rubbish.
Then, once again that was that. Or should have been. Except that a class mate asked me if I wanted to buy his collection outright.
New acquisition
I inspected it – with my newly acquired expert eye – and handed it reluctantly back. I would very much like to buy it, I explained. For it was a far nicer album containing a far larger number of far more attractive stamps. But also worth far more than my one shilling and sixpence.
To my surprise the boy insisted he wanted to make the deal. For some reason he wanted just to be rid of his collection, yet had no desire to sell it off stamp by stamp.
Climbing the ladder
So I bought and sold, and within minutes had doubled my money. I was on my way to my first million.
Soon afterwards however the stamp craze subsided.
To be replaced by a new one involving plastic covered electrical wire.
This plastic coating was a product of the war, and so vividly coloured – to our colour starved senses- that it resembled jewellery. Boys began cutting it into short lengths, pushing out the wiring and sliding in pins, thin nails – anything that could be bent into shape and stay there.
Getting creative
Thus they fashioned brooches, quite simple ones such as swords at first, then with increasing complexity, displaying them on their lapels (calling them badges of course) and swapping ideas on how to fashion them.
A new market sprang up. I had some odd lengths in different hues, left over from a wiring project of my fathers’. So I stuffed it into my satchel and set myself up in the playground, selling at one penny a foot, colour of choice.
I quickly ran out of product – as did my rivals. But once again I was approached by a rescuer.
Free supplies
This time my partner was a boy who knew where to get unlimited supplies of the stuff, in a dazzling array of colours, and all for nothing. Taking my disbelieving self to the part of town near where he lived, he showed me a large heap of scrap wiring dumped as faulty by the factory that produced it. And easily reachable via the back fence.
I don’t know why the boy approached me, and I once again don’t know why he didn’t want to partake himself of this easy way to profit.
Nor care. Once again I began spending playtime serving a queue of boys, all entranced by what I had on offer.
I had finally cracked it. An item everyone was willing to pay for yet which I could obtain for nothing.
Until someone snitched to the headmaster. Who kindly yet firmly reminded me that the school was a place of learning, not a market.
Undeterred
This didn’t stop me however. Oh no. I simply began standing outside the school gate at home-time and carried on. I had the bit between my teeth and no teacher was going to stop me becoming rich, at a penny a foot, colour of choice.
What did stop me was girls.
The bus I caught to take me home ran past a whole gamut of schools, most of them co-educational or girls’ establishments. And was therefore already crammed with those exotic and somewhat bewildering creatures when me and my mates boarded.
Time to show off
At the age of eleven or twelve I had only the vaguest idea what you were supposed to do with them, but they turned out to be ideal for showing off to.
But if I spent even half an hour selling outside the school, the bus home was bare of them by the time I got on.
So that was that. Sex reared its barely comprehended head and I succumbed. Broke once more.
Yet much happier, I think.
