In Linton we heard tales of Dave the Postman, a dedicated fellow who daily braves every crazy barking dog and suffers every inadequately-sized and/or snapping letterbox in the village while on his rounds delivering the mail. As he is generally on foot, and delivers right to the door I imagine most villagers know him to say hello to.
On our American suburban street, the mail is delivered by a mailman in a white mail van. Since he doesn't have to get out of his van (he just reaches out of his window) to put the mail into our box at the bottom of the drive (or to take it out if we have the flag up to indicate mail for collecting), it's not often that anyone gets to say hello to him. Today, however, I happened to be standing on the drive when his van came along, so I took my mail directly from him.
"So, you been on vacation? How was it?" he asked. (He hasn't had to stop at our house for the last two weeks because we put our delivery on hold.)
"Very nice, thank you!"
"Where did you go? England? Visiting family and friends?"
Whoa! It's a little unnerving when someone you've never spoken to apparently knows all about you. But I daresay the mailman, without ever stopping to chat, knows more than most about everybody on the street - our interests, what we've ordered from Amazon, who shares our surname in a foreign country...all sorts of potentially fascinating details. Who needs electronic surveillance?
We have Bill as our postman - who has Dave? Bill definitely knows all about us from our mail-order habits ('another car part for your husband?')
ReplyDeleteWe have Dave. He used to stop and chat til the dog nearly took his arm off.
ReplyDelete