Pat the, Pete the, Paul the Post

We have a new Postman! When he retired in 2015, I wrote about the community centred service meted out by Paddy our first postie at Caisleán an Blob. He'd been with us, and for us, for 19 years. Peter replaced him and was with us for 9 years. Postal delivery workers have complete autonomy about how they run their round - from clockwise or anti-clock to the details about whether to do the long dead-end bohereens on the way out, or on the way home. It always includes a break for 'bait', because if they got back to base early, then the An Post time-and-motion manager would soon be consolidating 9 rounds into 8 and letting someone go from the payroll. I think Paddy got a cup of tea in someone's kitchen on the reg'lar but he always stopped on the same verge mid-morning for his union-time break.  It do be captured by the first (and so far only) pass of the Google-car in 2009:

He certainly didn't get buffeted by passing traffic there.  Pete was different (b/c we're all different): we were later on his round, and his union-break was one drop after us. If I really needed to know that he'd nothing for us, I could peer through the trees in the SE corner of our haggard and see him parked up on his spot in the valley below. A couple of times, I trotted down the lane and 500m along the county road to hand Peter an outgoing postcard. I did once, foolishly in retrospect, accept a parcel from one of the courier services at Peter's Stop - lugging a 20kg case of plonk uphill was more than I was expecting, even for my birthday.

Now, because P for Postmen always come in threes, we have a new postie who goes by Paul. He's fine, his van is even bigger than Peter's but I showed him how to turn in our lay-by to save him having to open our gate. Years and years ago, I moved our post-box to the outer wall of one of our sheds, so that regular mail could deliver through the van window rather than getting wet getting out. Rural posties serve a vital role as social cement: must to what we can to make their round easier.

In 2015, I also wrote about the politics of post, my mother's postie, corporate bullying and the power of the articulate middle-class.