Olden Life
Jeremy D Rowe
When I was at school, my friends and I all aspired to be temporary postmen at Christmas. In the 1960s my school, Poole Grammar, like many others, closed nearly two weeks early for the Christmas holiday so that sixth-formers could work for the Post Office.
For the first year or two, the hapless teenager was assigned to Christmas post delivery. This meant getting to the sorting office at the ungodly hour of 3am and sorting the post, mainly Christmas cards, using street-by-street pigeon holes. The cards and letters were then bundled in numerical order, with rubber bands, and stacked in an enormous satchel ready for delivery.
We then got a huge cooked breakfast. We were treated well by the regular posties, though being called Jeremy I was considered very posh, and always referred to as Jerry. The regular staff seemed to enjoy having the students around, as we were clearly relieving them from a lot of the heavy lifting, as well as a great deal of walking round the streets in all weathers. We didn’t have uniforms, but wore an arm band identifying us a part of Her Majesty’s postal service. The pay wasn’t great, but very welcome pre-christmas pocket money.
We were taken in the back of a Morris van (no seats, safety belts or health and safety) to be dropped off on the corner of the street where we would start deliveries. I remember in my first year being assigned to several identical-looking streets on the Waterloo council estate, and not only struggling along with a bag of post I could hardly lift, but sometimes having to go back to the end of the road to check what street I was in. We also had to cope with the weather, and got regular soakings.
The greatest challenge was coping with the variety of letter boxes, some close to the ground (hard to reach down with the weight of the post bag), others far too small for the post, and many with vicious springs that could easily trap your fingers. And of course there were always a few with a noisy dog waiting to make you jump.
After a year or two doing it, your temporary postman duties got much better. With luck you’d be assigned to an indoor sorting job, and of these the best was to be on the night shift, which paid better wages. I spent a very happy three weeks at Bournemouth sorting office, where there was lots of work, so that you could do as much overtime as you had strength to keep standing. One chap managed to work all night, all the next day and all the following night, by which time he was on triple overtime wages. It was ironic to be paid better money for staying in the nice warm sorting office than the younger students got plodding round the streets in all weathers.
My final year as a temporary postman was spent on the night shift sorting parcels. I was part of a team assigned to a temporary parcel sorting depot in St John’s church hall in Boscombe. We’d sort parcels for a few hours, but when we found one which was nice and soft, we’d throw it to one side. Around two o’clock in the morning, we’d take a long nap, lying on all those soft parcels. Little did the recipient of that lovingly knitted jumper from auntie know that it had been a jolly nice pillow for a night or two at the sorting office. The trick was to be awake and sorting before the regular postman arrived to cook that allimportant cooked breakfast. Bacon never tasted so good.