My stint as a Christmas postie

As a veteran of many Christmas jobs in my youth I’m a bit spoilt for choice as to what to write. There was the memorable time I slaved behind the bar over Christmas and New Year in a working man’s social club – too messy, too non-woke to write about, though great fun in its way. Then there was the time I did Christmas shifts in an old people’s home – way too sad.

So, I’m opting for my stint as a Christmas postie in the early 1980s. In those pre-internet, pre-Amazon delivery days, the UK Post Office would get overwhelmed. Cards with precious fivers from great aunt Gladys, parcels from grandparents: piles upon piles of Christmas deliveries. We were the living embodiment of Father Christmas.

By mid-December the Post Office in my little Lincolnshire market town would take on students to help fight the festive torrent. And I was one of them. The pay was good, but I knew the hours would be brutal. In the end being at work at 6am was the least of my problems.

The central postal depot in town looked chaotic, but it had its system. Letters and small parcels – the big parcels were not entrusted to us – had been sorted into residence numbers and according to streets, each street batch in its own sturdy elastic band. Each of us was given our own postal patch. So far so good.

But then I was presented with not one – but two – jam-packed mail bags which were placed criss-cross over each shoulder. At this point I should say I am not tall, a mere 5 feet (a tad over 1.5 metres). Even so I count myself as a sturdy beast, but these sacks even on their shortest setting reached down virtually to my knees, which nearly collapsed under their weight.

One stroke of luck, we were dropped off in a van to our delivery area, but then the fun really began.

That winter was brutal and it often snowed heavily overnight. Some of the streets had been trod into slush. Others had not, and a lot of the pathways to houses were not cleared of the snow which reached over the top of my wellington boots and trickled downward, essentially refreezing my already freezing feet. But the hands were even worse. Imagine trying to prise letters out of the elastic bands holding them in place wearing gloves. You simply can’t do it. And so my hands froze too.

The snow brought its rewards though. Think of the cartoon cliché of the ‘Beware the Dog’ sign as a postie gets bitten on the bum. Well, the snow kept all those bum-biters indoors, though I had to beware of those eager postie destroyers when I slipped the post through the letter boxes. Though, then again, my fingers would have been too cold to feel anything.

Some of the old houses that had been divided into flats could be impossible to find or involved walking upstairs carrying your troublesome burden. And looking for 25A or 17C sounded easy when I was in central office, but there I was wandering around for hidden entrances which I couldn’t always find. And you’re always conscious that you are on private property. I must come clean and admit I was sometimes forced to put the post in the main entrance and hope the resident there would find enough Christmas cheer to rectify my mistake, although I never stooped as low as others and merely to merely put it back in a post box!

This isn’t really a tale of all doom and gloom. Some people were so appreciative of what the postie did, especially at Christmas. Elderly ladies were particularly grateful and swift to take pity on me, eager to give me chocolate and mince pies as if I were truly Father Christmas. Others even pressed coins into my – freezing – hands.

Was it all worth it just to make a dent in my rapidly spiralling student overdraft? When I compare my postie job to what must be its modern equivalent – working in a soulless, cavernous, time-keeping Amazon warehouse – then, yes, definitely. RIP in the Christmas postie.