Mail deliveries are becoming

more and more erratic around here. Yesterday there were no deliveries at all in this street. It is a short street and I suppose it is possible that nobody had any mail but it does seem unlikely.

During the Covid lock down periods, and for some time after that, the mail was only delivered every second day. That meant we had three deliveries one week and two the next. People managed but there were some serious delays. Now the postal service is complaining it cannot make a profit, even while reducing services and increasing prices. It is all a far cry from the days in which there were eleven deliveries a week. 

My maternal grandmother was a great writer of letters and she expected letters in return. If we were staying with her for any reason it was our duty to "listen for the post man" and tell her he had blown his whistle at her letter box. We were not permitted to get the letters ourselves of course. That was something only she was allowed to do. At the time we thought that was not fair. We were allowed to do it at our paternal grandmother's home so why not with her as well? 

The reason for that did not become clear until we were much older and we understood that she was probably looking for evidence our grandfather had "another girlfriend". He also ran his precision tool engineering business at the same address so his business mail went into the letter box as well. This was the excuse that was given to us but the reality was different. 

I sometimes wonder what the postman made of it all. If "Nana" heard him coming she would go and wait at the letter box until he reached her. There was almost always more than one piece of mail. 

If my grandfather was still alive and still working then there would be a computer and business would be done that way. He would probably have it all heavily password protected too. Mail deliveries for his business would be of the parcels and small packets kind.

It is of course this sort thing which has caused a dramatic drop in mail deliveries. With so much less to deliver there are no longer any deliveries on Saturdays and week day deliveries only occur once a day - if they occur that often. 

Yes, the postal worker is supposed to deliver five days a week. Still, more than once, people have noticed that there are days of heavier deliveries and days of no deliveries at all. Perhaps we are wrong but I sometimes wonder whether the postal worker simply does part of the round and then goes off to do something else. Parcels can arrive on Saturdays or even Sundays because the parcel delivery people often do have other jobs. Delivering parcels is just a second job for many. It seems we have to wait.

And it is not just parcels. I had an email from someone late yesterday to say that the documents I sent her fifteen days ago had finally arrived. She lives seventeen kilometres from here and neither of us has a car so I used that old fashioned "snail mail". 

"I could walk faster than that and they don't even blow a whistle any more!" she told me in disgust. No, they don't. It is really quite distressing.