Royal Mail

There is something infinitely intriguing, childishly titillating, almost disturbing, about seeing a Royal Mail van filling up at a petrol station – like any other motorist!  Do they not realise that to the British public they are no ordinary human-operated metal box?  Their little red snouts peek out from behind our curtains as we sit at the breakfast table and offer a glut of stimulations.

This steel sleigh holds promises of the new and the polished for the eager buyer, a brown paper parcel plops onto the doormat, a mere lick of cellotape keeps consumer and product apart. 

The impatient pen pal goes as far as to greet the mail at the door like an over-zealous puppy, forcing the postman to note the Australian stamp – oh yes, I know people.    

The fervent lover stops as he hears the squeaking hinge of the mail-box, and the soft wilt of an envelope upon the carpet, he wets his lips at the thought of another honey-drizzled letter, signed with an X, maybe three this time.

The Royal Mail van is, in my mind at least, an element of Britain that sits outside of time, much like the telephone box used to.  I do not imagine them to interact with traffic as other automobiles do; they follow an unfaltering and undisputed path, as if lead by a tram wire, or given the authority of an ambulance.  And but for that brief peck on the cheek of your doorway, they do not intermingle with the world.  Eventually, after a long day of short-lived interactions, they return home to the crystallized workshop, somewhere underground.