Disappearing post-offices

I confess that I had always been in theory keen on keeping local post-offices open (on the "how would granny manage without one" principle), but I hadn't actually done much to protest at their disappearance.

Which serves me right, as I was well and truly caught out today.

I wanted to send a letter for guaranteed next-day delivery -- though I hadn't actually realised that I needed to do this until about 3.00pm. At this point I was actually knackered. I had been biking around all morning, doing a recording for the BBC, trying to fit in some library time . . . . and so when I got home to deal with the offending letter that needed dispatch, I thought that rather than bike into town again to the central post-office, I would nip in the car.

Big mistake.

The husband had already told me that the nearest post office (on Histon Road), which he had tried to visit earlier, appeared to be on a week's holiday. So I decided to motor up to Girton, where I knew there to be another one. Indeed there is and I found it, but it turns out is only open four days a week in the morning. By this time I was in the car, so decided to nip back into the centre to the little post-office in King St, forgetting that there are barriers in the road that make it impossible to access King St from the Girton end of town.

I was now on a mission. So I decided to try the Chesterton post-office. Indeed that would have been a great idea, but for one thing:  it turns out that it has a half day (wrong half) on a Wednesday.

OK. I know what the moral is. If I had just got on my bike and cycled off to the centre of town, I could have had my letter in the post in far less time than my whole unsuccessful post-office trip took. Lesson learnt. All the same, the fact that there is no accessible post office open in West Cambridge on a Wednesday afternoon (unless I missed an obvious candidate) is a bit jaw droppping.

The same might be said for our postal services in general (yes, I do know that "Post Office Counters" is separate from the "Royal Mail"). Currently our post at home arrives some time after 1.00 pm, and the poor postie has been deprived of his bike and has to manoeuvre his van round a town where (as I have just demonstrated today) it's much quicker to go by bike. .... while miraculously delivery companies are managing a seven day a week,speedy, tracked, service (though I do wonder what the wage comparison is).

Something the matter?