Dorinda McCann column.

Byline: Dorinda McCann

ONE of my earliest childhood memories is of visiting the post office near my home in Birmingham. The post mistress used to sit me on the counter and give me a packet of sweets and though. I couldn't have been much more than two or three I remember in vivid detail the feel of the counter under me, the view down to the varnished wooden floor and the feel of the steel grid against my back.

As a child I bore a strong resemblance to Shirley Temple which made me very popular with adults. I had a mop of blonde curly hair that disappeared when I was around eight years old much to my mother's disappointment. She would pick up strands of the offending tresses between her fingers and let it go with a wistful sigh, remarking to my father that she didn't know what had happened to turn my curls into hair ``Like a pound of candles''.

The biggest attraction in the post office was not so much the attention from adults but a collie dog called Stamp who sat with me on the counter and shared my sweets. I would laugh at him trying to get the sweets from between his teeth with his paw and on every journey home I would pester my mother for a dog of my own.

When we moved back to Wales I was delighted to find that in the tiny village two miles from our house was another post office and one that was far more interesting. It was run by a Scottish lady called Betty who was known as Betty Post --pronounced to rhyme with lost.

As I got older and learned to speak Welsh I realised she spoke it fluently with a Scottish accent. She was as thin as a rake with legs like sticks, the fronts of which resembled corned beef from sitting too near the fire. Women always seemed to have corned beef legs in those days; I imagined it was a condition beyond your control that befell you as you got older. She wore check carpet slippers and a turban and bore more than a passing resemblance to Dilys from the Fireman Sam children's programme.

It was a very basic shop with a hollow-sounding woodenfloor, a cretonne curtain that covered the entrance to the living quarters and lots of shelves that held Heinz tinned soup, Lockwood's carrots and peas, Horniman's tea and blue bags of sugar. There were also packets of Tide and Omo and drums of Vim,bags of Reckitt's blue, double bars of Puritan and Sunlight soap and bars of red Lifebuoy - the smell of which I hated. There were lots of glass jars containing sweets - Satin Cushions and black and white Bull's Eyes,Radiant and Bluebird toffees. On the counter were more sweets and chocolate bars, Spangles in different flavours - Old English in a black and white wrapper and peppermint in a blue and white starry one.

She sold Bear Brand stockings in American Tan with a picture of a teddy bear wearing a top hat and carrying a cane and bearing the mysterious words ``fully fashioned'' on the box. My mother would pick up her beloved magazines from there - Woman's Own and Woman's Realm - and my father's Reveille and Hot Spot. I was allowed a comic,Beezer or Beano with the adventures of Pansy Potter, the strong man's daughter. It was a place where people spent time talking to each other - exchanging gossip,discussing news,just generally glad to see other humans as most people,like us,lived isolated lives. It was a bustling,friendly place with Betty holding court,chatting away as she raced between the groceries and the post office counter.

The building is still there on the little village square but Betty and the Post Office have long gone. The paint is peeling, thenets,once snowy white, hang in rags from curtain wire stretched across windows encrusted with 30 years of grime. All gone the way of Kunzle Cakes, sweet tobacco and Bear Brand Fully Fashioned stockings. My own little post office that I've used for 20-odd years is to close this year also,another victim of the government's policy to pay pensions directly into the banks.

With the closure of so many sub-post offices another little chunk of the British way of life bites the dust and a little more of our identity is eroded. Very sad.