Life in Bonnybridge as a paperboy

---Life in Bonnybridge as a paperboy, (amongst ithir things)by Geordie Ellis

Raeburn stoves & CommerLorries running through Bonnybridge early Sunday morn
s when i was walking down to old Wattie Gray's newsagensy to split the newsp
apers for all of us paperboys, making a hellafa put put exhaust noise.20

I got paid extra money over and above my normal20
run(sometimes two runs if another paperboy didn't turn up. Finished and back
at 15 Gateside Ave for about 1-2pm and earning more for the Sunday effort t
han as a 1st(1958), 2nd(1959) & 3rd (1960) & 4th(1961) year Apprentice Metal
Fabricator/Welder at Apprentice wages at Mitchell & Russell's Iron Foundry i
n Bonnyside road

My Sunday Papers routine for Wattie Gray, newsagent at Bonnybridge Toll
Talk about eat! On sunday morn i'd get up about 6.30, have porridge, made by
Maw the night prior and left in the back wall of the pantry as it was a coo
l room
I'd have porridge and milk
Then walk or bike down tae the paper-shop, split the papers into the various
bundles for the some 6-8 runs.
Then by about 8am, get out on the Larbert Rd run. About two hours later, bac
k to the papershop, count out the money. Usually I would then do the the sec
ond run, Main St, Thornton Ave, Gateside ave, Falkirk Rd20
/ Main St, and round the wee side crescents til i got back to Gray's newsage
ncy.

After leaving Gray's i walked/ cycled back to Bob Aitkin's place in Princes
s St, digging his garden for about 5shillings. Bob was crippled during the w
ar and had a job as George Albert Ure's chauffeur. Ure was the managing dire
ctor of the Smith and Wellstood factories, which include Mitchell and Russel
ls, up Bonnyside Road, where I started my apprenticeship in Metal Fabricatio
n/Welding in Early 1958, age 15.20
But, back to Sunday newspaper runs. When I started in the morning, I had my f
irst breakfast at home about 6-6.30am, then on my run back later in the morn
ing when I delivered my own folks papers ca 10am, I had another breakfast, t
hen along to my mate, Don Alexander's place, where his Mum, Voilet, (who had
just died ca Sep 2016), would give me another breakfast,
Then, if I went to Bob Aitkin's to do gardening, I would have another eat.
Sunday was always a very busy, very rewarding day, what with food, paid gard
ening, paid pre-paper run preparation for the other paperboys, doing from on
e to three paper runs, when paperboys didn't turn up!
At one stage, as a paperboy, I was earning more money than in my first and s
econd years of apprenticeship.20
46rom memory(as all of this is, some 55-60 years later), I was lucky to hav
e had the opportunity.
My apprenticeship was brilliant, as was the Tech days and nights20

George Ellis(formally of 15 Gateside Avenue Bonnybridge from age ca4yrs til m
y marriage and my wife and I subsequent migration to Australia in 1963
I owe a lot to Scotland and tae ma ain folks and the guid folks o' that aptl
y named, bonny wee place cauld hame, 'Bonnybrig'.

'Carron shores fir Iron Doors, bit Bonnybrig's fir men(and wimmin).'

Geordie Ellis fae Gateside Avenue, now residing in Australia
Email from Dad - October 2016