20 Years Ago Today

It was this day in 1987 that I joined Royal Mail as a Postal Cadet at the age of 17. I started off doing 3 easy deliveries on a 3 week rota, 2 on the Horringer court estate and 1 in the town centre which took literally about 15 minutes around higher and lower baxter street, the rest of the duty was indoors, in the now knocked down sorting office in St.Andrews street.
The 1st day I went out on a delivery, accompanied by a postman showing me the round, I was bitten by a Cocker Spaniel up Scarlin road, Great start !
About a month later and it was the hurricane of '87, the one Mr Fish said wasn't coming. I normally cycled from Horringer into Bury to and from work each day, but on that particular morning, my father seeing the weather gave me a lift to town in his car. On the way we had to negotiate fallen trees on the road. At work that morning we weren't allowed out on delivery until quite late in the morning because of the risk of falling roof tiles.
Once I got my driving licence I was allowed to transfer to a rural delivery and started delivering to Norton, Hunston and 2 streets in Walsham-Le-willows. On my 1st day being shown this delivery round I was attacked by an German Shepherd in Hunston and it scratched down my back with its front paws, drawing blood, when it jumped up at me.
Another day while doing this delivery, in a Morris Marina van, I managed to end up in a ditch in Walsham-Le-Willows on a really foggy, damp day. I had to climb out of the passenger door up above my head. The Royal Mail breakdown Land Rover came to pull it out, and it hadn't got enough traction to pull the van out from where it was. A passing oil delivery tanker offered to hitch his truck to the Landy and together they pulled the van out.
I broke both front Indicators and one headlight on the van and it was back on the road the next day. My only injury was I bit my lip, and I didn't have a seat belt on.
I had to take a driving assessment after that, and while going along the A140 the assessor says turn right here, and we're at Mickfield fish centre, "I need a new pump for my pond" he tells me.
In 1990 I transferred to working for the counters, which back then involved a six week training school and two weeks on the counter with someone with you, back when it was all paper and pencil and no computers. I did this at Ipswich P.O.
There are so many more memorable incidents, colleagues and customers. A couple spring to mind the most. One involved my manager at the time. We had gone down into the basement to get some metal radiator covers that needed to go back on the radiators after the decorators had painted. In the corner of the room by an old, (empty) mail bag was what looked like a Rat. While my manager is trying to jab it with a broom handle, I've got two radiator covers, back to back, standing up on end that are about four foot long. Well one falls away from me and slams on top of a fluorescent tube, lying on the floor, with an almighty explosion. I will never forget the look on his face holding that broom handle, prodding what turned out to be just a ball of frayed mail bag material.
Another was one time when shredding some confidential waste with another guy. He lent over the shredder to compact the waste into the bag that catches it and his neck tie went in the shredder. He managed to pull it out, as it dragged him down, and his tie had perfect stripes up it. I laughed so much it hurt, my stomach ached, I tried telling someone and couldn't get the words out.

They all seem like yesterday, the time seems to have past so quickly.

Will there be another 20 years ? I can get it in before I'm 60 but the retirement age will probably be 70 by then.

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