Paperboy Read Free

the
Titanic
). The volumes were fascinating from an anthropological perspective, but also dusty, peculiar and vaguely offensive. I loved them.
    In a house that contained so little to read, I would read anything, because I possessed no functioning critical faculties whatsoever. At breakfast I would read the Cornflakes box, and then, when it was empty, attempt to make the absurdly complicated paper sculpture of a tiger’s head that Kellogg’s had printed on the back of the packet. I would even read the sugar bag, although Mr Cube, the anthropomorphic lump of sugar brought in by Tate & Lyle to deliver propaganda messages against the government’s plan to privatize the sugar industry, gave me the creeps, as did Mr Therm, the weird dancing gas flame who advertised cookers. When there was absolutely nothing else left to read at the breakfast table I would read my father’s
Daily Express
, every front page of which featured ‘Our Radiant New Queen’. In times of desperation I read my mother’s knitting pamphlets. 7 I would read on the toilet and in the bath, and while crossing the road, which you could do because there were hardly any cars about. I read while walking along the pavement, aided by a sixth sense that kept me from vanishing down manholes or smacking into lampposts. I read just standing up for a pee, with a comic book propped on the cistern.
    Ideally, I wanted to read every book in the English language, climaxing with Shakespeare, which at the moment looked like gibberish. But the only things I could afford to buy for myself were comics, and they became my literature.
    More than that, they were an addiction.
    The first one I ever bought was a Harvey Comic featuring Baby Huey, a stupid giant yellow duck in a nappy. When this character proved unsatisfying I switched to Hot Stuff the Little Devil, Little Dot, Casper and Wendy, Sad Sack, and Richie Rich, the adventures of a grotesquely wealthy blond boy who was forever carting around wheelbarrows full of giant diamonds. Even at an early age, I knew this comic was wrong.
    But there was something bigger and better out there, and its name was Superman.
    1 Glowing lime de-greaser; could double for Green Kryptonite.
    2 Rough-as-guts cancer-sticks for the working class affectionately known as ‘gaspers’.
    3 A ‘resort’ on the Isle of Sheppey that comprised a lido, a funfair, some manky beach huts, a nasty estuarine beach and the pikiest holiday-makers on the South coast.
    4 Occasionally humorous Victorian magazine famed for its longevity in dentists’ waiting rooms.
    5 Elizabeth’s hard-drinking sister, a legendary royal freeloader inexplicably worshipped by the lower orders.
    6 On Empire Day a grateful nation (and Canada) held inspirational speeches and lit bonfires in their back gardens. It became Commonwealth Day in 1958 in order to sound less patronizing.
    7 Most of which have now been turned into a range of smutty birthday cards suggesting that the models were rent boys or on drugs.

3

    Not a Hoax, Not a Dream, but REAL!
    ‘YOU ARE GOING to take it back.’
    My mother was holding up the comic I had just bought. It wasn’t that she disapproved of me reading them. She was angry because she’d given me a shilling to go and buy a sliced family loaf, and I’d come back with Superman.
    ‘I can’t take it back.’ The idea was mortifying. It had been opened and
partially read
. It was like taking two bites out of a Mars bar and trying to return it to the confectioner.
    When Kath stood with her right hand on her hip, she was meant to be obeyed. Her pale-blue pinafore dress and freshly lacquered helmet of tight fair curls formed the weekday uniform of a woman who intended to get things done. ‘This is a lesson you need to learn, Christopher. You did a wrong thing, and you must undo it by yourself, even though it hurts. Take it back.’
    I took the comic from her and headed across the road to Mr Purbrick’s with shame soaking into my heart. Why didn’t she