A cheerful word from the postie is a lifesaver

THERE are few callers more trusted, in every household in the country, than the local postie. And there are few sights more welcome in a farmyard or at the door of a remote rural dwelling-house than the post van.

Growing up on a farm, I remember how the arrival of the post van meant that dinnertime – in the middle of the day, obviously – couldn’t be far away. And even if the only delivery was a clutch of bills in brown envelopes, that was never all that the postman brought.

Our local post office, as in all rural villages, was in the middle of the main street, and it was the first port of call for locals picking up messages, buying stamps or postal orders, collecting the pension or the children’s allowance, and so it was the hub of all human life, all news and gossip.

The postman was always first to know who’d cut the hay early, bought a new car, had a new baby or got a new job; who was engaged, or sick, or worse. Whoever went out to the postman invariably returned to the kitchen with that most Irish of posers: ‘Do you know who’s dead?’

When few rural families rarely ventured to the village beyond their weekly outing to Mass, the postman or woman was a vital link to your neighbours, your friends, your community.

The news that An Post’s delivery staff are to start checking in on older and vulnerable people on their routes is one of the most inspiring, and potentially game-changing, of all the goodwill initiatives this crisis has spawned. The closure of rural post offices in recent years was a major blow to the cohesion of communities around the country, but this development places the postal service right back in its traditional spot as the beating heart of Irish life.

The plan, led by the Communication Workers’ Union and An Post’s chief, David McRedmond, is that postal staff will check in on customers they know might be at risk. They’ll have a series of questions to ask and they’ll report any concerns back to the HSE.

They’ll also take requests for provisions or medicines, and they’re even planning to deliver local and national newspapers to households where folk are unable, or reluctant, to venture out to the nearest shop and rely on the daily paper to keep them in touch.

When Amazon boss Jeff Bezos’s eyewatering divorce settlement was announced last year, wags joked that the billions going to his ex-wife would be left with her next-door neighbours or placed behind her bin.

Online shopping may have made home delivery an everyday occurrence, but it rarely involves a personal touch. You never meet the same delivery person from one day to the next, and they don’t have time stop to chat. And with the increasing use of drones for delivery, the human element was in the process of being removed completely.

BUT this new reality has adjusted our experience of the most mundane interactions; when we are standing together by staying apart, those fleeting encounters that we once took for granted are now precious and eagerly anticipated connections.

When you can’t get out to meet friends or workmates, your post-person is probably the only caller who greets you by name and has a cheery word each day… especially if you’re self-isolating with family members and tempers are getting short.

And when Skype calls and texts have taken the place of face-to-face meetings, suddenly the arrival of a carefully chosen card or a handwritten letter has a novelty and a permanence that electronic communications will never manage to equal.

In another clever initiative, we’ll all receive a free postcard from An Post to send to a loved one, just to let them know we’re thinking of them. And once you’ve written one card to one friend, and rediscovered the pleasure of putting pen to paper, sure you might as well fire off a few more…

A good friend of mine had a birthday on Thursday, an event I’d normally mark with a quick text and a promise to meet soon. This time, though, I got a card, wrote a note, and popped it in the post. In years to come, when it turns up as a bookmark or in the back of drawer, she’ll remember a birthday like no other in 2020: for much that was good, let us hope, as well as the bad.