A trip to the post office…

I had to go to the post office to post a parcel the other day, but first I had to find it. Whatever happened to those imposing brick and stone buildings that used to sit proudly on high streets resplendent with flags and bunting and rows of bright red pillar boxes standing to attention on the pavement? They were easy to find back then, very apparent in their post office glory. Of course the trio of telephone boxes and the postmen’s carrier bikes, leaning against the post office wall, helped. These days forget posting a parcel, it’s more like a game of hunt the parcel.

Where did all the post offices go?

Of course the postal service isn’t what it was. No longer is it at the very heart of industry, finance, and trade in the way that it once was. For one thing there’s e-mail, for another there’s the bloody competition with their white vans and their knock and run deliveries. I hate those bloody cards informing me that they called but I was out, when I bloody know I was in.

Oh, for the days of Her Majesty’s Royal Mail when the postman had shiny brass buttons and a military style cap, the days when a trip to the post office was an exciting adventure full of anticipation. It seems that our Main Post Offices have become so ashamed and shy that they’ve gone into hiding, tucking themselves away in supermarkets, bookshops, and mini-marts. I’m sure they’d turn themselves to invisible greyness if they could.

Not like the old days. I remember when my town’s post office had shiny marble floors and the pens at the counter were full of real, rich, dark blue ink. There were always plenty of knowledgeable staff in suits and ties and nicely pressed skirts, and the ceilings were immensely high. The side counters were stocked with official looking forms – applications for temporary passports, dog licenses, post office savings accounts, and both television AND separate radio licences.

It was an oasis of peace and order, not unlike the town library or the post office’s big cousin the bank. You entered its hallowed ground with the doff of your cap and a smoothing down of your Fairisle sleeveless pullover, self consciously going through the large oak doors as if you were on camera – which of course you weren’t back then.

Any deviation from the not very long queue was met with horror by the horn-rimmed, tightly permed, counter assistants, and running around inside would result in a slap across the head from your mother her half-hearted punishment often followed by a jolly good thrashing from your father when he got home from work for causing such embarrassment.

Ladies wore hats to buy their stamps, men tapped cigarette ash into brown bakelite ashtrays whilst waiting for car tax documentation to be checked, bow-tied senior clerks frowned suspiciously at you over metal framed specs, and all information was imparted in secretive, nervous whispers. It was all jolly, jolly, good and you didn’t go to the post office without having a wash, combing your hair, and polishing your shoes.

Yaroo chums! Yes, back then it was like living in an Enid Blyton novel, and the post office was a mysterious, slightly frightening place run by Nazi sympathisers… Schnell, schnell, actung, and Fritz!

Despite the huge cream fans that whirred above the customer’s heads in summer, and the big brass, overly ornate, dolphin knocker screwed to the post office door, my clearest memory of the post office was the polished brass posting box that was set into the wall outside. For years I believed that there was a class system in operation with ordinary people posting their letters into the second class slot and the posh people posting their letters into the first. Maybe that’s where the Nazi connection came in.

It was quite a while before I realised that it wasn’t a status thing and only about the type of stamp you bought. By then I must have posted dozens of my parent’s first class letters by second class.

These days the shiny copper posting box has been painted, the copper all hidden beneath a coat or two of dark brown paint.

Drat those Nazis.