With the Royal Mail being criticised left, right and centre for its poor delivery and the threat of 30,000 redundancies hanging over its workforce, News Shopper reporter ED HADFIELD spent a day as a postman to see what it is really like at the post office in the run up to Christmas ...

Let's face it, getting up in the pitch dark at 3.45am is no easy task. Most of us only do this kind of thing when we're catching a flight to Tenerife for our summer holidays.

So it didn't help me leave my warm bed knowing my destination was the Royal Mail's Bexleyheath sorting office, rather than a Tequila Sunrise under a palm tree in the Canary Islands.

Postmen deliver an incredible 25 million letters and cards in the DA postcode area in the four weeks before Christmas, so it was no surprise to find a hive of activity when I started work at 5am as one of 81 postmen delivering mail to Bexleyheath, Welling, and Barnehurst residents.

I was amazed to hear the mail had already been sorted into postcode areas by machines with computer programmes which can read people's handwriting.

The rest would be easy, I thought, as a manager told me to group them according to their road and house numbers.

How wrong I was five hours later, with a mashed brain, tired eyes and aching arms, the cards, letters and parcels were ready to be delivered.

They reckon a postman sorts and delivers 1,850 letters a day. At a guess, I had just sorted double that amount, although not without the help of Malcolm Rodwell, whose postal round I was joining.

Malcolm has been doing his Bexleyheath round for the past 15 years. You certainly realise how popular he is when you ride your bike down the high street with him and every second person toots their car horn and or shouts hello from the pavement.

He says the job has got harder since he started working for the Royal Mail 27 years ago and I'm not going to disagree.

We delivered five bags of mail that morning, each weighing 16kg. That's 80kg which is no small task.

Malcolm, 51, of Cornwall Avenue, Bexleyheath, said: "It used to be that we would deliver mail to one in every five households.

"These days, because of the way companies target customers with junk mail, we deliver to almost every single household on the postal round."

He added: "This used to be an old man's job, but these days it's more suited to a younger workforce, just because of the sheer volume of mail.

"But that's the way of the world. Everyone has to work harder."

Toward the end of the round, with my hands freezing cold against the chrome handlebars of my pedal bike, I was happy to be invited in for a cup of tea by Edith Hawkins.

Edith is 89 years old and Malcolm has been delivering her post for as long as she can remember.

She said: "He's my favourite postman, very caring, very friendly, you can't fault him at all, he's always laughing and happy.

"I give him a Christmas card and a present. He doesn't expect it, but we're grateful. If he found me in trouble unconscious on the floor, I know he would call the doctor. He is always ready to help."

So, to you lot out there who moan and whinge about your post, I suggest you think again, It's no easy task.

December 20, 2001 17:00