Kenton Bar Celebrities Pre-1988 - The Potato Boy
This brutish oaf would be “employed” in collecting the money that unsuspecting folks paid for what can only loosely be called potatoes. Quite why people could not go to the nearby shopping centre (VG at Kenton Bar Shops) and buy them, instead having them delivered by a feller who came all the way from Yorkshire in order to deliver, is beyond me. However I digress. This "potato boy" used to lumber about in the speedy wake of Dave The Milkman and try to collect the potato money. He was for the most part unsuccessful as Dave has relieved everyone of their hard earned only minutes previously – the choice being in those days between paying for milk OR potatoes but not both – some money had to be saved for tabs, pools (more later) bookies, the Provvy Woman and countless other persons trying to get money on a Friday night. What little money he did take however was taken to his hovel at the bottom of the estate and divided between himself and his family – the actual takings having been so distributed were then misrepresented to the gyppo potato deliverer every week. By the time the Potato Boy quit he had built up a debt the size of Iceland and is still paying it off a 50 pence a month.
Factoid – his head really looked like a great big ugly potato.
factoid: He was called 'the potato boy' for the rest of his life, even when he was no longer a boy but a fully grown man...
ReplyDeleteThe reason people got potatoes delivered was because they were the stable diet in those days-traditional english food-pasta and rice were unheard of. People ate so many of them that it must of made sense to get a massive bag delivered each week. More, this ammount of spuds would have been to heavy to carry unless you traipsed out the the shops every day, and most people did not have cars, only posh types from Leeches like Shades or posh types from up the top like Snappy the binman's...so it made sense no doubt to get them delivered you see...
ReplyDeleteMy Dad had various jobs with cars or vans supplied.
ReplyDeleteI remember my mate Mebbys had a big bruv with a Plessey Van that you used to see parked outside at the top of Hazeldene.
Factoid: His head really did look like a potato - hence the monicker "Potato Boy" which has nothing whatsoever to do with his job.........
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