Musings from the Merse
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Get me to the Post in time
Huttonian paid his first visit to the Mobile Post Office -Hutton Branch-yesterday. It comes hot tyre from Coldstream for one hour 12 to 1 on Mondays and Fridays disrupting, one assumes, some pensioners' dinner times. One old friend was being served when I arrived so I had to wait in the Hutton chill while she was being served-only one customer in the van at a time for 'security reasons' This could be a problem on wet and windy days especially if a queue builds up and one solution would be to open the adjacent village hall during post office times (It wasn't yesterday) Nor was there much sign of customer demand-I saw one other pensioner in the twenty minutes or so (out of the hour the van is there) so I wonder if the come and get it facility but you have got to hurry is been given something of a cold shoulder.
The van itself is hi-tech with a gsm mobile phone type connection for on line transactions. Its shiny new and with a more or less full time post mistress/driver (It serves three other locations and the pm/d is part of the Coldstream PO not yet closed but I suspect living on borrowed time.
AS I helped the sole other customer down the rather difficult steps at the end of the van I asked her if she missed the old post office-'Desperately' she said and especially when it was in the Old Manse. 'That was fun' she said 'On the kitchen table and all'
Indeed; even if it sometimes meant licking the marmalade* and brushing the crumbs** off the bottom fiver of your pension.
I bought 4 packs of First Class stamps.
A Hutton record I believe.
(* Post Mistress responsibility. ** Pensioner's ditto)
Huttonian paid his first visit to the Mobile Post Office -Hutton Branch-yesterday. It comes hot tyre from Coldstream for one hour 12 to 1 on Mondays and Fridays disrupting, one assumes, some pensioners' dinner times. One old friend was being served when I arrived so I had to wait in the Hutton chill while she was being served-only one customer in the van at a time for 'security reasons' This could be a problem on wet and windy days especially if a queue builds up and one solution would be to open the adjacent village hall during post office times (It wasn't yesterday) Nor was there much sign of customer demand-I saw one other pensioner in the twenty minutes or so (out of the hour the van is there) so I wonder if the come and get it facility but you have got to hurry is been given something of a cold shoulder.
The van itself is hi-tech with a gsm mobile phone type connection for on line transactions. Its shiny new and with a more or less full time post mistress/driver (It serves three other locations and the pm/d is part of the Coldstream PO not yet closed but I suspect living on borrowed time.
AS I helped the sole other customer down the rather difficult steps at the end of the van I asked her if she missed the old post office-'Desperately' she said and especially when it was in the Old Manse. 'That was fun' she said 'On the kitchen table and all'
Indeed; even if it sometimes meant licking the marmalade* and brushing the crumbs** off the bottom fiver of your pension.
I bought 4 packs of First Class stamps.
A Hutton record I believe.
(* Post Mistress responsibility. ** Pensioner's ditto)
Labels: Hutton Post Office, Mobile Post Office, Old Manse
Comments:
Considering the £35 I just spent in Coldstream PO on postage (I was behind someone else spending tens of pounds on postage) - I don't think it's under too much threat - others would appear to be more immediately threatened (Cornhill for instance)
Poor Norham across the watter (my nearest one)suffered the fate despite several businesses in the area. My nearest post office doesn't open in the afternoons (nor stock the papers I read and has never offered to) and we don't get the post until then so Norham was a godsend.
# posted by 
: 4:30 PM
: 4:30 PM
It seems that turnover has little to do with decisions to close. Greenlaw Post Office was well patronised in a flourishing shop but was chopped
If I read the (sham) consultation documents correctly it does depend on transactions, but the type is important - if there are lots of "inputs" to Royal Mail (ie. letters and parcels being sent) that's somehow "better" than pensioners drawing their pension. More than one Post Office I've been in and sending a pile of parcels leading to tutting and foot stamping in the queue and the Postmaster has intervened and told them all that their miserable 3 second class stamps a year doesn't keep him open.
Indeed. In our first 5 months in charge of Hutton Post Office on our kitchen table-twice a week 9-1 we sold 4 First Class stamps-and those to an English incomer. We were not under threat-the PO highheidyins urged us to keep going-'a viable network' don't you know. 1997 that was
Post a Comment
