Prepare for the Royal Mail postal strike with a bit of postie appreciation - Gaby Soutar

Something nice for me?

Pic: Gary L Hider - stock.adobe.com

I have a Pavlovian response when I see the red van parked on my street.

There’s nothing like the potential of a surprise, even if it’s been a while since I had a hand-written letter or gift, even a postcard. Instead, it’s always bills, or correspondence for our flat’s previous occupants, who left over a decade ago.

Alison Baker: nobody knows you moved. “Return to sender!!!” we scribble on the envelope, before sticking it in our nearest letter box.

I wonder how long it’ll be before those landmarks are relics, like phone boxes, which now double as urinals and micro offices for dodgy dealings.

Royal Mail is in trouble again, with various strikes, organised by the Communications Workers Union, on the run up to Black Friday and Christmas.

It’s a dispute over pay and working conditions. Pat is not a really happy man, and he can’t afford cat food. None of us can. Soon we’re going to have to eat Jess.

Of course we wouldn’t really do that, though feline burgers aren’t too bad, once you’ve picked out the whiskers.

It feels like this postal service is something else that we’ve always taken for granted, like heating and affordable food.

After all, it’s been around for so long, since the 16th century-ish. Perhaps when the Great Plague was going door-to-door, posties were doing the rounds too. Not that there’s any connection, obviously. It was the rats what done it.

Now, with cancelled letter deliveries on various October dates, we must be at last orders for Halloween. Act now, if you want to send someone an amputated finger or pressed tarantula.

Once I’ve found my green Biro, I’ve got a few poison pen letters to issue immediately. The professional trolls do it all online these days - so convenient - but hopefully there won’t be any physical missives delivered to my house.

At least I wouldn’t shoot the messenger. I’m always happy to see my posties.

They seem to have more time for customer service than the delivery drivers, who practically lob your package through the door like they’re in the San Francisco 49ers.

Then they’ll sprint off in their uniform of grey joggers cum harem pants. Unless they have to take a photo of the parcel on your doorstep, in which case you awkwardly pose in the background, grinning glaikitly. I often try to chat to them, in my desperate working-from-home-have-no-friends manner, but you can see the panic in their eyes. The clock is ticking, and they have umpteen other addresses to fling ASOS and Amazon parcels at. I can imagine the stress, I’ve seen Ken Loach's Sorry We Missed You.

I have two regular Royal Mail posties. One of them always rings twice. It seems to be her signature, and I do wonder if she’s read the book or seen the film.

She’s always cheery, in her red fleece and gilet. I want to chat, but she’s too quick for me.

The other likes to hang out, and shuffle his pile of letters about, with his specs pushed down his nose. It takes him a while to get to our address, and he’s a prolific elastic dropper.

You shall know them by the trail of their rubber bands.

I think many people have affection for posties, or the concept of them. They wouldn’t make a stop motion animation about any other sort of delivery profession. There will never be Deliveroo Dave and his Dappled Dachshund. Mind you, Postman Pat, which ran from 1981 until 2006, was created years before Royal Mail was privatised. The business is a different beast now.

Long before it had its embarrassing spell as Consignia, I knew a few people who worked for them temporarily.

My late dad, as a student in Glasgow in the Fifties, earned extra money one year by taking on some pre-Christmas shifts for Royal Mail.

He delivered around the city’s West End. At one particularly grand house, they warmly welcomed him in, let him sit down and gave him a glass of sherry and a mince pie. They told him what a wonderful and charitable thing he was doing.

“Oh, I’m not doing this for free”, he said. “I’m getting paid”.

They snatched the sherry glass out of his hand, and threw him out. He found this story very amusing. I thought it was depressing. I hope those toffs choked on a stray sultana.

My husband also had a longer spell as a postie, as seasonal relief, back in the Nineties.

It was the perfect job for a socially anxious teenager who wanted to work solo. Thus, he acquired all the secrets, like a taxi driver’s Knowledge.

Each postie has a book with warnings and practical advice in it, about the flats where there’s an angry dog, dodgy resident or ones where the buzzer doesn’t work. If they have a regular route, they’ll become familiar with every gate that sticks and which floor of a tenement will let them into the stair.

On his first job, he was tasked with a block in Edinburgh’s Abbeyhill. He got to the top and the final parcel went through the letterbox. As he left the building, a window opened.

“Postie, this isnae mine,” shouted the woman, before dropping her delivery from the sixth floor.

It smashed on the street below. We’ll never know what precious object was inside the Jiffy bag.

Others were kinder. He remembers one woman who gave him her newborn to hold, while she picked up her letters.

We tend to trust a postie.

I hope they get whatever they want.