There can't be a worse time of year to be in a Post Office than the last postal date before Christmas. There are several of these, of course - the earliest being for those cards going furthest. I've managed to acquire plenty of friends in far-flung places, so the other day, on the final day, I was queueing up to get the stamps needed to mail a small piece of light cardboard to the other side of the planet (72p). The line in the central George Street post office was truly epic - I opened the door and everyone looked at me (as you do automatically when someone comes through a door), it was just a sea of tired faces. So I did a quick about turn and went down to my local Post Office where the queue had to be shorter. It was, but only just.
The UK has 14,000 Post Offices, I would think every UK citizen has stood waiting in one at some point (apart from maybe the person who has their face on the stamps; and I don't mean Santa Claus). Apparently many are struggling - the Government recently announced plans to close 2-3,000 of the lesser-used rural ones. The General Secretary of the fancifully-monikered 'National Federation of Subpostmasters', Colin Baker (who also runs the Timelord Union), said in response "Post offices needed to introduce more modern products and services", as today the whizz-bang generation shop for everything online and in large supermarkets and so forth. So are Post Offices modernising? My thirty-five minute wait to buy a dozen stamps - oh yes - gave me ample time to conduct a survey.
The very first thing I saw inside the door? The key thing for consumers to entice them in? Pickled Onion Space Raiders, in their familiar dark blue box - and still at only 10p. They have been 10p for about thirty years - when 10p was a good daily wage. Now we're spending £3 on hand-rubbed partridge jus and sweet polenta flavour snack delights, and the best value snack on the planet has crashed in price, yet remains 10p. I can't work it out. Anyway, I digress slightly. The key to Post Offices is impulse shopping - you're a restricted figure, shuffling along at 30cm a minute, they can leave things in your field of vision that you can't resist. I had to restrain myself from wildly snatching a plastic lottery card holder (68p, choice of three colours), a badminton racket, and a bottle of kitten milk in a teat-shaped bottle.
There's an entire range of minimally-priced goodies sold at Post Offices on a large white rack - called 'Little Things'. Their slogan is 'Every Little Thing Helps', which I'd have thought would interest the lawyers of Tesco. Here's what I saw for sale, on one rack (and this is only what I could remember) - thread, tacks, tape, laces, combs, balloons, padlocks, fuses, aerial sockets, drill bits, tweezers, bandages. The kind of stuff you have a drawer for in the kitchen and never need until you can't find it. I suppose that's their marketing ploy. Maybe I underestimated them. At this point, I'd covered half the ground to Terry and Waheeda the two servers (I felt like I'd known them forever), and reached the piles of unsold newspapers ready to go back to be pulped (universally the Daily Mirror). An old lady tried to winkle into the queue by pretending to be cheerfully potty, but being British we moved slightly closer together to deny her a spot.
Here's a question for you - who on earth writes Airmail letters these days? You can still buy the pads - which have a picture on it of the similarly defunct Concorde, rather fittingly. I always thought it was specially light paper for cheapos writing to Uncle Bernard putting down the colonials somewhere, to tell him the cricket scores. People who were too mean to pay the postage for a real paper letter will by now have discovered email or some other method of communicating that is free (or essentially free). But after mulling this over for a while I found myself at the magazines section, and could peruse what was vying for the attention of the British public. Celebs getting married or divorced, flashing their knickers (or lack of them, at the moment), who got fat or thin. Mags about angling, cars, knitting, hair 'Hairstyles Only' "...not a scalp inside!"
The new issue of Hello! has Brad and Angelina on it, the latest 'No.11' has Anthea Turner. Speaks for itself, really. Although I take issue with the former's claim of the Pitt-Jolie's 'beautiful children'. Have a look for it when you're in the newsagents next, it's been a while since I've seen three amazingly wierd-looking kids. Fair play to them. Anyway, my gaze was then enticed by more wholesome fare - 'Animals and You' with 4 sparkly gifts and a feature on sweetest pinups - not Matt from Busted, but touchingly a baby seal cub. The junior section is always the most fun to look at, but it makes you feel old. 'Classics from the comics' is a combo magazine from major kids publications, listed on the front. Only three of them I'd ever heard of - The Beano, Dandy, Sparky, Beezer, Nutty, Topper, Crackers, Buzz. Sparky? Crackers? What happened to Whizzer and Chips?.
Thankfully by this time I was almost there. I managed to retain some dignity after my temptation by sparkly gifts and pathetic knowledge of comics, at the gossip section. Crap, all of it. On the one hand, you have Love It (60p) - sample headline "My nipple dropped off after botched boob job", then the very next magazine is Reveal - sample headline "3 day 'Panic Diet' - lose your jelly belly." At the risk of this turning into a Media Studies essay, what kind of message does that send out to girls? Stick with the sparkly gifts, that's my advice. Also if anyone considers buying the 'Official Lost Magazine' - with 'behind the scenes interviews with the cast of the hit TV show' I would only say this. The writers make it up as they go along. It means nothing. Nothing! That's what I was thinking when Waheeda called out to me, and a rough prodding from an old bat behind propelled me towards the counter, and all pointless thoughts ceased. Post Offices are great.
And is it just me, or does the Royal Mail's official Christmas stamp (above) feature Santa doing a poo down a chimney?
The Post Office
Post Offices - a Community's heart
Space Raiders
