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I'm 46 years old. No spring chicken. And until Tuesday, October 27, 2009, I'd never done a paper round.

When I was a kid I never felt the need to go out and earn pennies as my only hobby was football and my pocket money covered that. I didn't go in for designer clothes, or buy lots of albums - I taped my mates' instead - nor did I have a girlfriend until later when I found somebody who also liked football.

So why, you may ask, did I do a paper round today? And whether you asked or not I'm going to elucidate.

Our youngest, Ben, aged 14, has a paper round. He delivers the Petersfield Messenger - a free paper the sort with which I'm sure you're all familiar - to around 120 homes in our area. The Messenger carries everything you need to know about press releases issued by local community groups and the odd big news story lifted from other organs.

For carrying around half-a-ton of newspapers and walking the best part of a mile-and-a-half, young Ben brings home something around £7, give or take a few pence determined by the number of inserts included - they're the things that fall out on the mat and go in the bin first.

It's under minimum wage, given the time it takes him, but of course minimum wage doesn't apply to kids under the age of 18. They have a special Government-approved Far East Nike shoe worker rate of £3.57 per hour, which is good preparation for when they go out and get a real job and find themselves exploited by management. I'm sure it counts as a Government-backed education initiative.

Anyway, despite the fact I've got on my high horse on several occasions when Ben has returned home soaked to the skin, over the fact I believe it's hardly worth the effort and "I'd rather just give him the bloody money for cleaning my car", he insists on carrying on, bless him.

Until today that is. Today, he's not very well at all. Ben is a very athletic kid. He runs for the local athletics club and is as fit as a butcher's dog. But today he hardly had the energy to lift his spoon to his mouth over breakfast.

Knowing that one of the boys in his football team had been diagnosed with swine flu - and being a bloke who always naturally thinks a sniffle is the first sign of the onset of Asian flu - I wanted to keep close tabs on him and take him to the doctors.

His mother being the nursing equivalent of Genghis Khan - I discovered that myself in the summer when I was diagnosed with an illness which necessitated the loss of our summer holiday - dismissed my fears and decided we'd do part of his paper round for him. And it wasn't the royal we. It was 'we' as in me and her. 'Me' as in the bloke who's taken a week off to spend time relaxing with wife and family.

And so it was, that on a day's holiday and after 46 years of contended idleness in the realm of newspaper delivery I this morning found myself carrying an armful of free newspapers around one of the more affluent parts of Petersfield.

Some of these houses had substantial drives and, after completing my part of my wife's deal with her youngest, I had worked up quite a sweat. It was clear to see why I had eschewed the opportunity to deliver newspapers for the best part of five decades - it takes effort.

And it wasn't without incident. At one house, where the letterbox was at the foot of the door, I bent down to insert the paper only for the door to open and for a middle-aged lady to be confronted by a 23-stone bloke blocking out what should, by rights, have been substantial amounts of autumnal sunshine.

She screamed the scream of a middle-class home owner about to find themselves coshed over the bonce by an East End rough with a broken nose and a selection of cauliflower organs. The situation was not helped by me naturally reaching out to reassure her that she had not wandered into a scene from The Ladykillers.

Realising she was not in danger, as I had neither the energy nor the inclination to cuff her with a dozen copies of the Petersfield Messenger, she soon gathered herself and started apologising to me. To me, would you believe. Here was I, standing at the top of her drive inserting what was left of a small sapling through her letterbox, uninvited, and she was apologising to ME.

So I started telling her not to apologise and started to apologise myself. While all this was going on it took all her husband's efforts not to roll around the floor with his legs flailing wildly, so much was he laughing.

I must have been stood for the best part of two minutes talking to this poor lady, and her husband said not a word. He was too busy wiping the tears from his eyes.

Fortunately I did not come into contact with another human being as I dread to think what effect it might have had on an individual of a delicate constitution.

But as I finished the act of losing my delivery virginity I stood in awe of those boys and girls around the country who deliver papers every day - I assume there are some, somewhere, like milkmen and the bloke who sharpens knives on a grinder at the front of his bike.

Having folded the newspaper into a thinner package for easy insertion (no jokes please) I was still struggling to make a clean delivery without catching on the myriad styles of letterboxes - I didn't realise there were such a variety available.

And as I failed once again and turned a copy of the Petersfield Messenger into an origami piano accordion I realised what an art delivering papers is. I can't get 16 pages and a couple of takeaway menus through a letter box - how the hell do these kids get on with the Sunday Times?

I think we should be told...

PS In theory I'm on holiday all week, so if I don't blog regularly please accept my apologies now...