Former postman Dave Humphries describes in amusing detail what it was like working for the GPO in Derby over the festive season in the days when the snow lay deep and crisp and even, post boxes would be overflowing and the sorting office would be buzzing with all the extra casuals brought in to help with the mammoth task that lay ahead.

WHILE postmen everywhere – and women – recover from the Christmas rush, I wonder if their experiences bear any resemblance to mine in the 1960s.

As a postie then, the festive period meant three things to me – very long hours, having too much to drink and a chance to work alongside the opposite sex!

Forty years ago, we were a very male-dominated workforce. In fact, Alice Northern was, I’m sure, the only postwoman in Derby at that time and remained so for many years.

Alice delivered mail around the Sunnyhill area. I was always led to believe that she should have had her temporary contract terminated after the Second World War but it never happened.

In the weeks leading up to Christmas, there was a veritable invasion of housewives, students, pensioners – in fact, anybody wanting to earn a little extra by working in the sorting office.

Casuals, or temps as we called them, were employed on all sorts of mundane tasks, such as emptying bulging sorting boxes and, at certain times, you could hardly move around the place for bodies.

Getting a cup of tea from Kath, Ruby or Nora in the canteen often meant queuing for some time.

Most casuals, however, ended up in the delivery room where the real work was done. Postmen were given two or three to assist them on delivery. I always kept my fingers crossed that I would be given two young female students, even though it would mean me having to carry more mail.

The temps filled the building with a festive atmosphere. There was always a lot of impromptu carol singing from the more vocally-blessed ladies that belied the mammoth task that lay ahead for us all. In the main, every GPO employee worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week for two or three weeks and, young and fit as I was, it was quite literally just bed and work.

In the morning, there would be cardboard boxes full of letters waiting to be sorted, all under the gaze of a delivery room inspector who would greet you very formally with: “Good morning, gentlemen”.

He would be standing in a pulpit-like raised dais, viewing his arriving “pupils” in scholarly fashion, hands clasped to each jacket collar, spectacles perched precariously on the tip of the nose, looking every inch like the headmaster character portrayed in films by Will Hay – but without his humour!

All the inspectors did, of course, have a great sense of humour. It just tended to be kept under wraps, probably due to their military backgrounds. Inspectors like Harry Drakely snr, Jack Williams, Arnie Bridges, Dick Walpole, the Hurworths and more were from a different age to the vibrant 60s that I was growing up in. They received a good deal of respect, though, as they all knew the GPO inside out.

I progressed to becoming a driving postman soon after and went up a floor to the sorting office the following Christmas.

I was on collections, probably the most labour intensive job there is after delivery work. It was in the sorting office where all the bags of mail were tipped onto a large, letter-facing table.

After each postbox collection had been made – five a day in town areas – we stood shoulder to shoulder, wading through great heaps of letters turning each one the right way up ready for stamp canceling by Henry Watson.

Henry had the tip of a finger missing from an earlier accident when operating the machine and also had a spinal problem that gave him a semi-permanent view of the ground. I remember him with great affection.

Our 12-hour shift finished at 8pm and the more vociferous postmen among us, like Charlie Lazell, would try to cajole the inspector in charge to let us go a little early. That rarely happened and we just had to wait for “Whisky” Walker to clasp his hands to jacket collar ( all the inspectors seemed to do it) and announce: “Gentlemen, you may go.”

My collection that year was around the Allenton area. The Allenton Post Office postbox was the very devil to empty. Every time I turned up to empty it, letters and cards would be spilling out of the posting aperture. It probably took 10 times as long to empty it at Christmas than it would have normally done.

Thanks to George Roome, the previous occupant of the job, I enjoyed a cuppa at every post office. The old-hands always trained their postmasters well. For that reason, I had to drive very quickly back to Midland Road to make up for the time spent drinking tea – and to get to the toilet. So, now you know why mail vans drove so quickly in those days!

Apart from letters, we did, of course, deliver parcels. My first festive experience of this came when we made the move to Ascot Drive the following year, where a very unusual mode of transport was still being used – hired Trent single-decker buses.

A postman would guide the bus driver around his regular delivery area which must have been tricky at times, given the size of a bus. I never worked “on the buses”. Instead I used a GPO van for my delivery and remember we always had lots of big Avon cosmetics parcels to deliver.

Ascot Drive became our temporary home for a few years while a new sorting office was built, but often other buildings had to be rented as well to cope with the Christmas mail. In my telegram-years, I believe the Drill Hall on Becket Street was used and I did a shuttle service one year to the Ordnance Depot on Sinfin Lane.

A fundamental part of getting in the Christmas spirit involved drink. I was often asked if I wanted a drink by householders, office receptionists, postmasters etc and, to cap it all, the sorting office was surrounded by pubs.

On twilight and night shifts especially, having a convivial drink in your meal break during the Christmas pressure period, in preference to a cup of tea in the canteen, was part of a Post Office culture that was then accepted, though never condoned, especially if you went beyond acceptable limits, as I often did.

We weren’t alone in doing this as railway staff also seemed to have this culture embedded in their working lifestyle. Perhaps it had something to do with working strange shifts like 1pm to 1am? As a result, the pubs were always full of atmosphere. We also had our own social club as well, which was usually a much quieter place to relax before going back to sort another long tableful of letters.

The club was usually the venue for the children’s party – another vital part of the Christmas festivities for any postmen with a young family.

The first PO club I can remember was one that used a part of the newly-built sorting office, now the postmen’s locker room.

One of the inspectors, Ernie Randall, made a good Saturday night compere. Once we had moved into the new building en masse, the club moved to a floor above the St James’ Street Post Office and, from there, to a disused school on Traffic Street before ending up in the old Railway Institute building on Station Approach.

Many postmen and their wives gave up their time to ensure the kids – my two among them – always had a good time and a present from Santa.

The weather was always a crucial element in our Christmas working. Everyone, it seems, still wants a white Christmas and there have been a few in the past.

I always found walking in deep virgin snow very tiring on the leg muscles. Driving through snow to Buxton at 3.30 in the morning with empty mail bags draped all around the engine cover in an effort to keep warm proved to be a much more entertaining challenge.

All I have written about is now consigned to history – probably along with white Christmases. Will we ever have another one? We can only hope. The postmen will love it!

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