Christmas morning, 1953
From Dad's memoirs:
"For the Christmas holiday (or Vacation from University) I worked until Christmas Day for the Post Office in the market place, sorting and delivering mail. Again, the pay was very poor, and based on age (a thirty year old Army Sergeant earned twice as much as I did) but the practical out-and-about work was more to my taste than ledgers in offices. The franking machine would feed through letters into a collecting box. One day the sergeant sent about 500 letters through without the collector being in place, and they went everywhere. I see in the Wells Journal a long-running debate on the future of the sorting office; I wouldn't be surprised if some of the letters are still there! On another occasion I held up the last train to Bristol for about thirty minutes. The mail was taken to the station for the last train and one evening just before Christmas I found a label which appeared to have come off of one of the many mail bags. An unlabelled bag was a heinous crime so about four of us rushed down to the station and unloaded and then reloaded all of the bags. We didn't find an unlabelled one but we got an hour's overtime! One day delivering mail I found I was posting registered letters into people's letterboxes just like Christmas cards. This was wrong so I took them back; the supervisor had forgotten to ask me to sign for and get signatures for them. Christmas morning 1953 I was delivering mail up Milton Lane and finished, overlooking the quarry, as dawn was breaking."
"For the Christmas holiday (or Vacation from University) I worked until Christmas Day for the Post Office in the market place, sorting and delivering mail. Again, the pay was very poor, and based on age (a thirty year old Army Sergeant earned twice as much as I did) but the practical out-and-about work was more to my taste than ledgers in offices. The franking machine would feed through letters into a collecting box. One day the sergeant sent about 500 letters through without the collector being in place, and they went everywhere. I see in the Wells Journal a long-running debate on the future of the sorting office; I wouldn't be surprised if some of the letters are still there! On another occasion I held up the last train to Bristol for about thirty minutes. The mail was taken to the station for the last train and one evening just before Christmas I found a label which appeared to have come off of one of the many mail bags. An unlabelled bag was a heinous crime so about four of us rushed down to the station and unloaded and then reloaded all of the bags. We didn't find an unlabelled one but we got an hour's overtime! One day delivering mail I found I was posting registered letters into people's letterboxes just like Christmas cards. This was wrong so I took them back; the supervisor had forgotten to ask me to sign for and get signatures for them. Christmas morning 1953 I was delivering mail up Milton Lane and finished, overlooking the quarry, as dawn was breaking."