When it comes to money-making, I'm your man

I think you have already gathered that I came from a poor working-class background, not quite urban proletariat enough to provide the sort of cachet that D H Lawrence, for instance, had, but poor enough for me to realise that if I wanted something, I had to get it through my own efforts.
You don't know "The Pocket Guide to British Birds" by R S R Fitter and R A Richardson, published by Collins in 1952, do you?
Neither did I, until a schoolfellow called Douglas Walker brought it into school and introduced me to it and to the emotion of homicidal envy. All I had had to that date was a little book, published by a Christian organisation, with very few pictures and a message that we should all love birds because they belong to Jesus (that may not have been their exact message - I am no theologian - but it was to that effect).
Filled with lust, I decided I had to have a copy of the Fitter and Richardson. So, I added an evening paper round to my morning paper round and eventually had enough to go into W H Smith's to buy a copy (I would have shoplifted one, but they always seemed to make a point of watching me whenever I went into their shop, probably because the arse was usually out of my trousers). I still have the copy I bought all those years ago, as witness the addresses I scribbled in the front:
51 High Street, Hadley, Nr Wellington, Salop
followed by
St John's College, Oxford
followed by
53 Byerley Street, Seacombe, Wallasey, Cheshire
followed by
77 Howeth Road, Bournemouth, BH10 5DZ
I then bought other field guides, leaving the Fitter and Richardson to become an historical document.

My other lust in that epoch was to learn German, and the book I lusted after was "Teach Yourself German" in the Teach Yourself series published by The English Universities Press Ltd (Their motto: "Give instruction to a wise man... and he will be yet wiser" Proverbs 9.9). That one I acquired from the proceeds of some persistent carol singing on the new council estate at the top of Manse Road during the cold nights of late November, early December. Imagine a lone 14-year-old pushing approximate versions of "While Shepherds Watched their Flocks by Night" through a crackling voicebox struggling between pubescent soprano and pubertal tenor, a shivering lad driven by the desire to decline and conjugate nach deutsher Art. God bless the good folk of the Manse Road Estate for making that possible, even if they only gave me their sixpences to get rid of me.

And I taught myself German - after a fashion - from that book, sufficient to pass O Level German three years later, despite a lot of help from a teacher called "Titch" Hanby, who probably knew the language quite well before he decided to give up being sober.

Adolescence brought its own imperatives - I am sure I don't need to specify them, but they were all money-consuming - so I took jobs during the school holidays: the Post Office at Christmas, and, in summer, the Brewery where my father worked. In fact, I received my A Level results while I was being fondled by one of the girls at the "pop factory on the top road" (The Wrekin Brewery Bottling Plant on the Holyhead Road to be precise), thereby confusing my academic and sexual ambitions, a confusion from which I never fully recovered.

Then, it all got easier when I was awarded a County Scholarship to cover my expenses at university. But it didn't really cover them, mainly because I was so enthusiastic about girls and boozing. So, to pay my Battels, I worked at Hall's Brewery in Oxford during vacations, first in the bottling plant, and later as a drayman's mate delivering to pubs in the town and in the surrounding towns and villages. You should have seen me manoeuvring pins, firkins, kilderkins and barrels off the back of the dray, down into the cellar and up on to the stills. Poetry in motion, it was, balletic even.

So, when it came to money-making, I was no slouch. One day, when I grow up, I might see about getting a proper job.

PS Somewhere in the picture above sits Cynthia Brown, but I can no longer recall which is she. I just hope she has forgiven my impulsive lunge all those years ago. It was all part of my self-improving Teach Yourself phase....