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Roger Rabbits with |
I felt like a loyal old friend had just been given a terminal diagnosis.
“How long?” “September.”
“Really? Not long!” “No. Not long. Just long enough to get the affairs in order.”
She stared school ma’am-ishly across the top of rimless specs while we processed the cold hard reality. I thought she was going to cry.
Then we just shrugged in acceptance of something we had no control over. I had an urge to hug her. But no! Never hug the postmistress.
Pay bills, send parcels and letters, register your car, pay road user charges, chat about the weather…but don’t hug her. Postmistresses are dignified people of calling.
“We learned about it the way you did,” she said disgustedly. “On the radio.”
Probably something like ‘News at the top of the hour, NZ Post closes 142 urban retail partner stores – more shops than needed for mail volumes’. Three of them in Tauranga – Matua, Papamoa East and Cherrywood. Gone. Kaput.
“We found out on the news. Lovely!”
NZ Post cushioned the news by explaining 90% of us urban Kiwis will remain within 4km of a post shop. Yeah, great! As another keen scribbler pointed out, by the time you write the letter, trip 4km to the Post Shop, pay the $2.90 standard medium mail rate, then trip home, it would be easier to deliver the letter yourself. Be your own postie, cut out the middle-man.
Bitch and moan
If you are cold toast, like me, past your use by date, 4km is manageable. But it’s a whole lot less manageable and convenient than the short walk in the sun, with coffee, that it is now.
We’ve been down this old postal delivery route before. I bitched and moaned when NZ Post shunted its Tauranga CBD shop into an offroad, low profile, no profile, dingy cellar halfway down Cameron Rd. But this is worse. 142 shops! Gone!
I’m sure the business case is sound. Lazy, soul-less people not writing letters. So not enough mail to justify all the outlets.
But letters and stamps and post offices have worked well since someone put glue on the back of a Penny Black in 1840, licked it, and stuck it on.
I enjoy writing to, or receiving hand-written letters from, all my friends. Both of them. But I sense derision – foolish, worthless person. Who writes letters or sends cards now? Well, you are missing out on something deeply satisfying.
I understand people preferring the immediacy and convenience of an email or text. But an emoji doesn’t have the primal impact of an ink blot, a smudge or a thumb print. It doesn’t convey something deeply personal like that of hand-written messages.
Raw and explicit
Like this letter of 1796…famous and passionate, erotic and steamy.
“You are going to be here beside me, in my arms, on my breast, on my mouth? Take wing and come, come! A kiss on your heart, and one…”
You’ll have to imagine where Napoleon Bonaparte planted that other kiss on the Empress, to whom he famously did NOT say: “Not tonight, Josephine!” – apparently.
But the point being, none of that explicit and raw affection would have transferred well to an email and an emoji. It needed a letter, a strong flowing hand, water marked, rag-based paper stained with battle blood, and boiling with lust. And Napoleon didn’t have to ride 4km to the nearest Post Shop either. He requisitioned a corvette to deliver his love letters for him.
I also enjoy a difficult rapport with the postmistress. Every year, 10 days before Christmas I pop in with “stuff” for the other side of the world. It’s met with exasperation. “I told you last year, and the year before, this needed to be posted a month ago to get there by Christmas.”
Apparently there are 2.3 billion Christians worldwide, who, like me, want stuff posted at Christmas. “Think about it,” she said. I didn’t, because I was kind of hoping she might order up a special FedEx A300 to fly my stuff where it needed to be on time. She didn’t.
‘I don’t want to know’
Anyhow, Post Shops shouldn’t be surrendered lightly by rewriting a deed of business with the Government. If it is rewritten, why not just put a big red line through all the business imperatives and run it as a social service? Because letters and cards and connectivity are good for our mental wellbeing.
Messages about daily life, gratitude, condolences memories, milestones, deepest emotions. Perhaps NZ Post could translate all that into numbers and weave it into their spreadsheets? Fanciful, but nice if it made a difference.
A young friend is symptomatic of NZ Post problems. When was the last time she posted a letter? “Mmm – wedding invites – six-and-a-half-years-ago.” That doesn’t help.
I do my best for NZ Post. I asked the Postmistress if it was safe to put $200 cash in with a late birthday card. There were immediate signs of a mental health crisis and she said: “I DO NOT want to know” especially considering a spate of letterbox thefts. Regardless, the card and cash were very well received. Just not by the person they were intended for. Oh dear!