Childhood was a luxury for the middle classes until the birth of the Welfare State.

We’ve arrived at Chapter 20 of Harry Leslie Smith’s unpublished Green and Pleasant Land. Harry is 11 but because he has been a child labourer for most of his existence is more of a man than a boy.

Harry Leslie Smith was born on the 25th of this month in 1923. What a span of history he lived through during his 95 years of life. I am glad he died when he did. Six years ago, we had a chance to pull back from the brink and choose not to go into the darkness of fascism. What we are living now will only get worse and it will take more than a generation to change. This Green and Pleasant Land Project that will be completed and ready for a publisher in May is a fantastic testament- not only to him- but every working class person from the Great Depression, who made it loud and clear after WW2- that they weren’t prepared to live short lived lives of misery to ensure the entailed maintained their wealth.

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Childhood was a luxury for the middle classes. So within a week of moving to King Cross, I was again employed. A nearby outlet of Jubb's had a help wanted sign placed in their front window for a delivery boy. I went inside and inquired about the position. The manager asked if I could ride a bike and whether I had any issues with heavy lifting. I told him I was good with both as my previous jobs had given me experience. The manager hired me on the spot, which pleased me because Bill had started needling me that I was unnecessary ballast to the family if I wasn't bringing home a wage.

My delivery boy's job was arduous servitude. I was tasked with loading and delivering groceries stored in a basket mounted on top of the bike’s front tyre. The woven basket was laden with upwards of 60 pounds of groceries.

My delivery route was 20 miles in circumference and led me all across Halifax and the rural areas surrounding King Cross.

I did my duties energetically and without complaint. Yet it angered me that I was invisible to middle-class children. They didn't see me as anything more than part of the scenery to make their lives less burdensome. Workhorse or work boy, it was all the same to them. Their inherited wealth, father's wages, and grammar school upbringing indoctrinated them into a belief system- where they were the masters and the working class their servants. I despised them and envied their leisure hours denied to the likes of me. While I strained to ride my overladen delivery bike, middle-class kids were off to birthday parties, music lessons or the matinee. Sometimes, these middle-class kids tossed me the same awkward and uncomfortable glance as one would to an animal, overladen with equipment and gear.

After a few months of working as a delivery boy, the manager at Jubb’s expanded my duties to include working behind the counter. My manager liked keeping me at the front of the store as he was having an affair with one of the married female clerks and spent much time with her in the back store room. I caught them having sex on the sugar sacks once too often, but my manager, instead of firing me- gave me the task of designing the store's window display.

Whilst working at Jubb's, I took up smoking because my manager said it would give me more energy and stop me from being hungry. Every week, I bought Woodbine's for two pennies a packet that held five filter-less cigarettes. At break time, I stood outback, placed a fag on my lips and struck a match. I soaked into my callow lungs the coarse tobacco that made my head dizzy and but put to sleep my hunger pangs.

Next door to Jubb’s was a high-end chocolate confectionary shop. Their chocolates were all hand-crafted and presented in rich, beautiful boxes that were out or reach of an ordinary worker. The store’s clientele were mainly affluent house wives, with their well dressed children in tow. They were ignorant or indifferent to the want around them. They certainly perceived me as a non entity if they encountered me washing down the  the stoop in front of Jubb's.  

With a reputation for excellence, the chocolate shop routinely discarded- entire boxes of chocolate that they deemed unsatisfactory. They were dumped in a bin behind the store they shared with Jubb’s.

Out back, in the rubbish bin, exquisite boxes of chocolate with bows and ribbons wrapped across their tops lay like buried treasure amidst rotting produce. It seemed too good to waste, and many times at the end of my shift, I dove into the rubbish bin to fish out a box of chocolates. The first layers were always mouldy, but the lower tiers were perfectly edible.

I brought them home and shared them with my sister, mother and Bill. We were all gobsmacked by the richness of their taste and how the middle class lived so much better than our bread-and-dripping working-class existence.

Thanks for reading and supporting my substack. Your support keeps me housed and also allows me to preserve the legacy of Harry Leslie Smith. Your subscriptions are so important to my personal survival because like so many others who struggle to keep afloat, my survival is a precarious daily undertaking. The fight to keep going was made worse- thanks to getting cancer along with lung disease and other co- morbidities which makes life more difficult to combat in these cost of living crisis times. So if you can join with a paid subscription which is just 3.50 a month or a yearly subscription or a gift subscription. I promise the content is good, relevant and thoughtful. Take Care, John