Newspaper Paul

Paul was a mate of my old man, when they both went onto Elland Road regularly to watch Leeds United.

At 14-years-old, that football club was the biggest slice of identity I had. The paper round had started to add smaller bits of social armour to the outside of that big yellow, white, and blue underbelly, ripe for being gutted by any failing of the team on a matchday. As a paper boy I started to engage in small talk with the elderly folk in the flats I delivered to.

Paul was the caretaker, and after sitting in the stairwells, sifting through the sports pages of the full spectrum; from tabloids to broadsheets, even Financial Times, I’d accidentally-on-purpose seek him out as he sorted the bins or the mail on the groundfloor. He’d get all the transfer rumours, team news, and any other tenuous gossip surrounding the club. I had to work for it. This was 1997 and we weren’t online yet. At least not down in our working class world. So we made a bond and I felt like an adult, like I had some social worth at a time when, as a 14-year-old, it was incredibly easy to feel the complete opposite.

I looked forward to this, and for the same reasons, I seek out and take every opportunity to expose my kids to such relationships with local adults outside of their home and school. It brings on belonging and a sense of psychological safety, maybe even validation for something.

Back then I’d sit in my room on the evenings and sometimes feel a nameless melancholy in my stomach, especially during the autumn and winter months. My sensitivity was coming to bear, and I had no way of understanding it, no idea how to talk to other people about feelings or the more expansive thoughts I was starting to have.

It wasn’t as if Paul was going to answer them, but somehow, that passing interaction, built on something as trivial as sport, mattered. I’d made it out of bed far earlier than I’d liked, done my job, earned my £1 daily fee, and spoken to people, one of which knew something about me and the things I cared about.

Sometimes that’s enough, and I’d put that in any list of commandments to hand to anyone looking to lead a career and life with creativity.

Get out, do things, say hello, share something real.

It’s incredible how it can set things on a better course.