Paperboy (21 page)

‘'Bout ye, Jaunty!' shouted my big brother.

‘'Bout ye!' Trevor replied, proudly surveying his harem.

‘D'ya need a hand?' asked my big brother, with uncharacteristic helpfulness.

It was unbelievable! Within minutes my big brother had become a love rival, and now here he was, helping out on a rival float with a rival paperboy. I wanted to shout out something damning like, ‘How's your asthma, Trevor?!' or, ‘What's it like, visiting your da in the Maze?!' I was torn, because I knew deep down that Jesus in my heart would not want me to be so nasty – but the Devil on my shoulder just wanted to see the reaction on the faces of the adoring gymnasts. However, before I even got the chance to do anything impulsive that I might have regretted later, Heather Mateer kept things moving along once again. ‘C'mon, they're judgin' our float next!' she shouted.

We had to dash back along the Lagan Embankment at full speed. (This time we knocked a wee boy off his roller skates and spilled a pensioner's tea from her Thermos flask onto her knee.) We just made it.

Heather Mateer leapt up onto the stage first, because she knew we couldn't start without a Les McKeown. Inevitably, her parallels split once more, and she had to swiftly tie an extra tartan scarf around her waist, so the Lord Mayor couldn't see her knickers. Titch and Irene and me and my big brother were the last ones back onto the lorry, just as the Lord Mayor and the ladies with hats arrived, smiling appreciatively. My father pressed the button, and we were on. We sang and danced our hearts out in our efforts to bring a prize back to the Shankill. We did our very best, and, although the judges didn't look like they had bought too many Bay City Rollers singles recently, I was sure I could just about hear some very encouraging ‘ings' over the music. As ‘Bye Bye, Baby' blasted out, Titch McCracken looked at me, then at Sharon Burgess, and then at Eric Faulkner, and shook his head. Once again, I wanted to kick Woody.

As soon as all the judging was complete, the Lord Mayor and the ladies in hats walked along the Embankment once again, this time with huge rosettes to attach to the winners' lorries. If they walked past your lorry, it meant you hadn't won anything – but if they stopped at your float, it was a clear indication that you had won a prize.

We waited on our float with bated breath. It was a tense moment, like when the bomb-disposal unit was checking a suspect device. Some people couldn't handle the pressure. Philip Ferris told Heather Mateer that her Les McKeown performance had been ‘ballicks', at which Heather flew into a rage, pulling his hair and kicking him between the legs. ‘No, that's yer ballicks!' she screamed.

Philip Ferris ended up on the floor of the lorry clutching his groin, but no one went to help him. Heather Mateer's parallels were further split by the kicking action and she had to tie another two scarves around her waist, because you could nearly see her bum now. Titch McCracken kept taking wee sly peeks.

Just as this scuffle was breaking out, the Lord Mayor and the ladies with hats were approaching again. I could hear their ‘ings' getting closer. Would they stop? Were we winners? Were we losers? Were we brilliant? Or just a lot of dirt from up the Shankill who even had a fight at the Lord Mayor's Show?

The judges stopped beside our lorry. The teenage population of Upper Shankill held its chewing-gum-flavoured breath. There was silence. Everything was completely still, apart from all the tartan scarves blowing gently in the breeze. Then, as if in slow motion, like the Bionic Woman, one of the ladies in hats lifted a large rosette and firmly attached it to the front of our lorry!

The rosette read: ‘Winner – Second Prize. Highly Commended'.

‘Winner!' shouted my father.

‘Yooooo!' we screamed at the top of our voices.

We cheered and shouted, and then broke out into a spontaneous and never-ending encore of the Rollers' greatest hits. The Lord Mayor smiled, but the ladies in hats stepped back, looking a little nervous, as if they had just stroked a dog that had growled at them.

Within minutes, the engine of our lorry had started up again, and we began our victory parade back into town. As we turned onto the Ormeau Road where they made bread in the big bakery, we passed the Belfast Gymnastics Club float. My big brother and Irene Maxwell were once again distracted from their own performances by the performance of the others, and so, for a few minutes, we had no Derek or Eric in our Bay City Rollers. I caught a glimpse again of Sharon Burgess checking out my brother's attraction to the gymnasts. She had no chance! As I looked back in disgust towards the rival float, I noticed that they also had a rosette on the front of their lorry. This one said ‘Winner – First Prize'.

It wasn't fair!

However, once our rivals were out of sight, they were very much out of mind. As we arrived back in the city centre, we prepared for our mighty victory parade back home, up the Shankill Road.

As we drove past Unity Flats, where the IRA lived, even Catholic teenagers cheered out their windows at us and nobody threw any bottles or bricks at all. Then we turned up the Shankill itself. As our lorry trundled up the Road towards the Black Mountain, gangs of tartan-clad teenagers began to follow us, in the same way they would have followed bands on the Twelfth of July. My father turned the speakers up full blast as we continued our victory parade from Lower Shankill to Upper Shankill. Women with prams stopped beside burnt-out pubs and smiled and pointed at us for their wee children. All my worries about bad hearts and cheating girlfriends and exams and bullets and hoods and robbers were a million miles away now.

Everyone was laughing and cheering and applauding us as we made our way up the Road. Oul' Mac even stopped his van and got out, standing with his hands on his hips, as if watching an alien spaceship landing. I'm sure he was even smiling with a couple of teeth. We didn't stop singing for the whole length of the Road, not even when the lorry passed over the security ramps and we had to hold on tight, in case we fell over in our platforms. A Saracen full of soldiers stopped, and they all got out and smiled and cheered with English accents. All the teenagers that were following us on the road sang along with us, even a few skinheads, and they weren't even drunk.

We were happy! We were young and alive and brilliant! We were winners! Well, Second Prize: Highly Commended. We sang ‘Shang-a-Lang' as the gangs ran after us the whole way up to the top of the Shankill. We were Belfast kids! We weren't wee hooligans or thugs or terrorists! We didn't care what the rest of the world thought of us. We were proud Shankill kids! We weren't dirt! We were winners!

The following Monday at school I told everyone at BRA about our great victory, but most people weren't very interested, because apparently there had been some big rugby match on the same day. I had another argument in the playground with Ian, formerly of the TITS. He said that if he was going to dress up like an eejit in the Lord Mayor's Show, it would only be for a serious rock band, like Status Quo. I told Ian where he could stick his
NME
. Thomas O'Hara was the only person who had actually been there and had watched part of our float's victory parade past the City Hall. His da had taken a picture of our lorry with his Polaroid camera, and Thomas passed it round in Chemistry. Judy Carlton seemed very impressed, which pleased me greatly, now that it was becoming a case of ‘Knowing Me, Knowing You' with Sharon Burgess.

That Monday evening, I delivered my papers more carefully than ever. There was a photograph of our Bay City Rollers float in the Lord Mayor's Show in the centre of one of the inside pages. I utilised all my professional skills to gently fold each newspaper in a way that ensured our picture was never creased as I delivered the news of our great triumph through my customer's letterboxes. I was very proud. I was a winner, so I was.

Chapter 20
The Last Round

B
y late 1977, the world was changing. Everything was in full colour now – the days of black and white were just a distant memory. Thankfully, Donny Osmond had been dumped by most wee girls and David Cassidy had simply disappeared. Sadly, it really was ‘Bye Bye, Baby' for the Bay City Rollers, because now it was clear that ABBA reigned supreme. Meanwhile, at school, Ian, formerly of the TITS, was going on about some new thing in the
NME
called ‘punk'. He was predicting that punk would hit the teenyboppers so hard that ABBA would be forgotten forever.

Irene Maxwell was getting very excited about a new film that was coming soon, with disco dancing and music by a group from the sixties called the Bee Gees. It sounded rubbish to me. I was more interested in news about a truly amazing movie that was about to be released. Apparently it was called
Star Wars
, and the clips I had seen on
John Craven's Newsround
made
Doctor Who
look wobbly.

Although I had never imagined it would ever happen, parallels were actually going out of fashion so fast that you could get a pair for 99p in the bargain bucket in John Frazer's. Only the biggest hard men and millies were still buying them. (Titch McCracken bought two pairs.)

Northern Ireland, though, was just the same – them and us, and killing and blame. I was six inches taller and the peace walls were twenty feet higher. It was harder than ever to be the only pacifist paperboy in West Belfast when the hatred ruled everything. It was becoming clear that the Troubles would be for ever, so I realised I would either have to get used to it or get out of it. I couldn't get out of it, so I would just have to get used to it.

By now, I had delivered thousands of papers, and my paperbag was deepest black in hue. Oul' Mac was a little older and a little yellower, but he had invested in a brand-new Ford Transit van. This was twentieth-century newspaper delivery. My employer had his new vehicle painted yellow, of course. After several months of gathering ‘Wash Me' graffiti in its deepening dirt, it started to look exactly like the old van. This was Belfast after all, hard-wired to resist any apparent change.

I was changing, however. My fangs had been brought under control, and I no longer had the appearance of a bloodsucking monster. My brace was binned. Sources of distraction from my paper round were growing all the time. Schoolwork was harder, and homeworks were heavier. I now had GCEs looming, and they were like ten Eleven Pluses in a row. After-school clubs and new school friends from North Belfast were drawing me away from the streets of the Upper Shankill more and more. I stopped going to the Westy Disco every week, and on some Saturday nights I would visit friends' homes on the Antrim Road and in posh Glengormley. These were families who lived in chalet bungalows and went to Spain for their holidays. They had never been to a caravan in Millisle and their living rooms showed no trace of woodchip.

When I set out as a paperboy, my dreams were of being the Doctor with a TARDIS and a long scarf, fighting intergalactic battles with the Cybermen. Now my dreams were more likely to be of Agnetha, the blonde one from ABBA – and these imaginings were taking on a whole new narrative.

Sharon Burgess had changed too. It was never the same after the Lord Mayor's Show. She never did win my big brother's affections, but I let her go. (Well, to be honest, she chucked me shortly after, and then she cancelled her
Bunty
.) Now Sharon got
Jackie
and was going out with a wee lad who was taller than me and stacked shelves in the Co-op on a Saturday. This was a rung or two above the vocation of the humble paperboy. I survived, though. For a while, the nice ladies in the lingerie section of the Great Universal Club Book kept me going. Then my attention turned to new girlfriend opportunities. I found I couldn't decide between church youth-club girl, chemistry-class girl or girl-next-door girl. I was keeping my options open.

I still enjoyed being a paperboy, but the six-nightly commitment was seriously starting to get in the way of being a teenager. The end was inevitable. Of course, I couldn't just leave, though – I needed something better to move on to.

But then it happened: I was headhunted. I was approached by Leslie, the local bread man, and the Shankill's leading Orangeman. Leslie asked me to become a van boy – not in any ordinary bread van, but in the last Ormo Mini Shop in Northern Ireland! The Ormo Mini Shop was like a cross between an ordinary bread van and a caravan. You could walk inside: it was a proper shop on wheels.

This was promotion. How could I turn down such a tempting job offer? Most paperboys could only dream of an employment opportunity like this. I jumped at this chance for career advancement and accepted the job immediately. Working for Leslie would be a one-day-a-week job: Saturday mornings only, for five hours and at twice the money. It would be a daylight job all year round, and I would be inside the mobile shop and out of the rain at least half of the time. I wouldn't have to walk everywhere. No wee hoods would be up in time to try to rob me on a Saturday morning, especially with an adult on board. And I had heard you got free Paris buns.

But how was I going to break the bad news to Oul' Mac? I was sure he would be angry, and I was certain that Mrs Mac would be absolutely heartbroken. I considered a written letter of resignation, but I realised that was not Oul' Mac's preferred method of communication. So I decided I would tell him face to face and man to man. I would even give my employer one week's notice – not like other boys, who on their final day would simply tell him where he could stick his paper round.

When the momentous day of my resignation came, it started out like any other. Oul' Mac arrived in the new dirty van with my forty-eight
Belfast Telegraphs
as usual. He pulled on the handbrake with a screech and, with the engine still running, got out of the driver's seat, walked around the van in grumpy silence and opened up the rear doors to reveal a treasure trove of newspapers and glossy magazines. He then leapt into the rear of the van, cigarette in mouth, and dispensed the papers. I waited until the end of the paperboy queue that day. Oul' Mac must have realised something was amiss because I had earned first place in the queue long ago.

When the other paperboys had all gone, I finally spoke to my employer, as he was cutting the familiar tight white string on my batch of
Tellys
. I took such a deep breath that I inhaled some of his copious smoke.

‘I'm leavin', Mr Mac. I'm sorry, I've got too much homework to do now and … er, I'll be doing GCEs and, um … there's nothing wrong with doin' the papers, and I go to clubs after school and can't get home in time to do a good job any more, ye know, and I don't want to let you down but I'm leavin' next week, I'll leave my paperbag into the shop next Saturday after the
Ulsters
and thanks for the job and I've got a Saturday job now instead …' I spluttered incoherently.

A long concertina of ash fell from Oul' Mac's cigarette. For the first time ever, he patted me on the back, and his eyes sparkled a little.

‘Aye, all right, wee lad,' he said.

I was a paperboy no more. My career had just taken off like
Thunderbird 3
. I was a breadboy now, so I was.