Over the last few days the postman has made a point that the post is all junk mail that could go straight in the black box unopened.  The New Name for Charmin. Juan Sheet. Small and Mighty Etc etc. The target is clearly the housewife. Priceless insight into our culture, and once the success rate for junk mail drops then so will junk mail itself. Similarly spam runs at about 12% success rate and is therefore considered as effective as junk. The problem for the postie is no junk, no job. He’s missing an opportunity for a new Royal Mail service: the singing junk mail postie.  Each day he could dress as a toilet roll, or a toilet duck, or the Charmin bear.

The tally for equipment failure over the last couple of months has been one Tiscali modem, one Nokia phone and one BT handset. To add to the communication problems, the previous owner took the letter box with them. They were clearly ahead of the game. They knew the Royal Mail was doomed and posties would soon be the stuff of BBC costume dramas. On day one the postie, struggling to justify his existence dressed as a postman, filled out a postcard to say there was no letterbox and using his weekly allocation of elastic bands, strapped it to the door knob. He simply should have stood there and sung it.