Christmas Giving, Middle Age, and a Postman

Hi Everyone

Christmas is coming, and once again, we are out with Santa on his sleigh to raise funds for the charities that we support throughout the year. This is something that I have been involved with for over thirty years, and I never fail to be impressed by people's generosity. Every year, we rely on the weather being kind to us and despite the fact that we are told that the economy is stagnant and that unemployment is rising, it looks like we could be facing a record year. Ok, the weather has been good, but something else has changed. This year is the first time that we have fully embraced social media to tell families where we are going to be on any given night. Like many people, I have concerns that the content of social media and the way it is used can do more harm than good, particularly for young people, but used properly, it can be an amazing tool for communication. I hope that the Australian idea of banning social media for under sixteen year olds is a success, or if not, that the media giants will clean up their platforms. It probably will not happen with the level of abuse and misinformation continuing to grow.

This week I celebrated my birthday. I am not sure that celebrate is the right word, but there are, of course, two ways of looking at it. On the one hand, I am grateful to have reached another birthday in responsibly good shape, but on the other hand, it adds another number to the total and makes you stop to ask the question - where have all the years gone? Thankfully, there are many great memories with the good times, far outweighing the not so good times. It is interesting to discover which famous people share your birthday, and many years ago, before the days of Google, I discovered that Frank Sinatra shared my birthday, but as he never sent me a birthday card, I never sent him one. Now with the benefit of Google, I discovered that the great actor Antony Hopkins not only shares my birthday but was born the same year as me. I hope that his mother had an easy childbirth, unlike the Senior Partner, who had the worst experience in history. Well, that was what I was told. It must have been true as she did not follow the example of her mother, who had eight children. Over the years, Antony and I have followed very different career paths. I am certain that I would not have been a very successful Hannibal Lecter, but anyway I hope that, like me, he had a great day. I bet some of you are wondering if I have at last reached middle age. Although I do feel that it is near, I don’t feel that it is quite the time to admit that middle age has finally caught up with me. 

It was seventy Christmases ago that I was a Postman. It was just for ten days each year that we helped the regular postmen to cope with the volume of letters and cards. At that time, postmen came past your door twice a day from Monday to Friday and once on Saturday, with one delivery on Christmas Day. Nearly every envelope had a two and a half penny stamp on it, the equivalent of just over one penny in today's money. If you posted a letter on Monday, over 90% would arrive at their destination the following day, anywhere in the country. This Christmas, the Post Office is still contracted to provide a daily delivery. Now we have both first and second class stamps at 87p for a second class letter and an eyewatering £1-70 for a first class letter. If you apply seventy years of Inflation to that one penny, it comes nowhere near those figures, and we are lucky if we get three deliveries a week rather than eleven. That's progress, folks. Happy Christmas.

Just a Thought:

I am at the age where my back goes out more than I do.

I used to be with it, but then they changed what ’it’ was.

Middle age is when broadness of the mind and narrowness of the waist change places.

Brian