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Approximately, one year after leaving school I joined the Royal Mail. This started at Brentwood Sorting Office, and I stayed there for about two years. Interestingly; while I was at Brentwood they put me through my driving test… and I passed.
Ironically; I’d been learning to drive for about 6 months privately, but as I now realize on reflection, the instructor was not what they are now, and when I eventually took my test… I failed.
For approximately two years I worked out of the building shown below on the left.
Then, from 1981 through to 1987, I worked in the building shown below with the red Royal Mail sign.
As a point of interest, the photo below was taken in the late 1980s, and was the inside of the building above. Leading up to Christmas, the post office took on extra staff and a few of them are seen here and are the ones in casual clothes. For those of you who are interested… I’m the one second from right in the shirt and tie.
The first few years of being there are somewhat blurry to put it mildly, as different things were required to be learnt, to enable those of us to fulfill the necessary tasks. As I mention later, one of the tasks was being able to type, without looking at the keyboard.
I also remember, a few of us from different sorting offices went to Derby on a two week training course to learn the fundamentals of what was required. I cannot recall much of what went on as again it’s a distant blur.
One part I do recall, was at the weekend, some of those attending the course went back home. Because this was in Derby and I had travelled by car, I decided to venture to North Wales for the weekend. This was before I’d got to know the youngster in Beddgelert.
I ended up meeting up with five university students (two girls and three guys) just south of Caernarvon who came from Morecambe in Lancashire, and I ended up sharing the weekend with them.
To begin with my main task along with about 40 others was sorting the letters. This was now being introduced electronically and was based in a purpose built office block near enough in the center of Chelmsford. This was back in the early 1980s.
This involved sitting at a sort of keyboard as letters passed in front of you on a slowing moving thin conveyer belt. The letters would be upright (so you could read the address) and would pass at a reasonable speed.
The letter then passed through a stamp process (which was pins then) and small blue dots would be imprinted on the envelope thus allowing a bigger machine (cannot remember what they called the machine) to read the dots and thus sort the mail.
Due to how much effort was being put into this, you also had to learn each post towns two letter sorting code, which was not always obvious. Chelmsford was CM and the town of Colchester was CO. There was also the various parts of London to remember ie SE or SW just to name a few. There was additionally the rest of the countries major town and cities to learn, therefore there was a reasonable amount to learn and take in and remember, before you even got started.
The big emphases back then was teaching us to type, using all our fingers and thumbs, (as professional typist do) without looking at the keyboard. At the time I thought this was a really tedious process and it took about a week to get the basics in a classroom. However; on reflection it was a godsend, as it now allows me to type reasonably quickly, without looking at the keyboard.
The typing, was the most fundamental thing I learnt, and it assisted me all these years later with computer programming and creating stories.
After about four years of this, I kept filling in for the next day service data post, as not many people wanted to do it. This was mainly because, it involved a lot of paperwork, and again you had to know what you were doing. If you accidentally sent something to the wrong place, the Royal Mail would incur costs. Eventually, I was asked to take over the data post service, which was then, and still is as far as I'm aware, the Royal Mails next day delivery service. Back then data post was about the only service which really existed, unlike now where many other courier companies offer next day service.
Things got difficult for me towards the end of my time with the post office. This was mainly due to things going on outside of the job, which back then I didn’t know how to control. Thus, I made the decision to leave.
One thing which I was totally oblivious to at the time, was how much of a cocoon working for the Royal Mail was.
The purpose of telling you all this, is back then the Royal Mail paid reasonably well, compared with other jobs out there. They also paid weekly, and in cash.
So; now that I was working for the Royal Mail and had a car and money, I began visiting Beddgelert in North Wales and Rhayader in Mid Wales at the weekends.
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