Ad launched career.

NIMMI and Tosh Sehgal's 30-year stint as post office owners started when they answered an ad in the Chronicle in 1979.

"We never thought we'd get it," Nimmi said. "But we were just so happy when they called and said it was ours."

Nimmi, or Nirmal, was born in Ludhiana, while Tosh, or Purshotam, was born in Jallandhar, both in the Punjab region of India.

After they met through family friends, the couple married in 1969 and moved to England where Tosh was studying engineering.

In 1976 the family moved from Birmingham to Newcastle to be near Nimmi's brothers. They opened two clothes outlets called Benton stores, one in Newcastle, and the other on Wallsend High Street. But looking for something else, dissatisfied Nimmi and Tosh applied to take on the post office, which thrust them into the community in Lemington.

Nimmi and Tosh, who now live in Ponteland, remember their strangest day surrounding the death of a customer nicknamed 'Jesus' in the post office.

Nimmi said: "He just walked in, filled out his pension book, then dropped dead at the counter. I thought he had collapsed.

"But every other day here has been a good day. This is our country and community and we will miss it."

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MEMORY: The post office from around 1915