Mr. Postman Look And See If There's A Letter In Your Bag For Me.........

Here I am right out on the edge of Europe and my post gets delivered more regularly than it ever has when I lived in the heart of the city. And I don't even have a letter box!

I scared poor Alex, one of our postmen, a few weeks ago when he announced his arrival by flinging open the kitchen door when I was sitting there in my mis-matched pyjamas. I gently folded my arms over my bra-less boobs to hide the nipply bits and didn't stand up for fear of showing him even more than he'd bargained for. Poor Alex, I expect he's asked his employers for counselling by now. But there again he's a Ness Man - famed for their mad courage and their Guga Hunting - more of which in a future post.

There's been a bit of a battle here on the islands of late about the fate of the Post Offices. The main Post Office in Stornoway is threatened with closure and amalgamation with one of the supermarkets. Even though the supermarkets are not that far from the town centre they are both ordinary supermarkets and just like every other ordinary supermarket these two are also surrounded by tarmac and parking spaces. This is bad enough to negotiate when you're a fleet footed adult who is used to the antics of drivers in car-parks but not so easy when you've got a couple of kids in tow or you just want to collect your pension. Also - which supermarket will get the contract? The Co-op, who oppose the closure of rural shops and Post Offices or Tesco who will do anything to attract more customers through their doors? Hmmmmm....let me think.

On this side of the island things are a bit more basic. Our local Post Office is not much more than a garden shed with a bit of a pull-in outside for a car or two. Inside it's like an Alladin's Cave of stationery supplies stocked with everything you could possibly wish for to send anything you like in any shape, style or form and pens and pencils and all manner of things to stuff in your pencil case or that special drawer in the kitchen.

Ness Post Office

As I said, we don't have a letter box and neither do lots of houses here. It's the wind. The wind rarely stops so that last thing you want is a rattly letter box. This is one of the reasons that people have mail boxes beside the gate to their house. The other reason is that it's a bit different from a terrace of houses or a street of semis all in a neat little row for the postman to wander along posting things in letter boxes. Here the properties are spread out and set right back off the road at the end of long gardens that were traditionally the long skinny croft. The postie would have a difficult time fitting all of the deliveries into one shift if he had to physically walk up and down each garden path between driving from one house to the next. So I suppose I should be thinking about getting a mail box. There is plenty of variety here and in the 'waste-not-want-not' culture of island life there's an abundance of madly eccentric ideas for creating one.

I could make one out of a bread bin.

My neighbour does what most people do and mount an old bit of drainpipe onto a post.

Maybe my old microwave is more weatherproo

Some of the mail boxes last longer than the properties do!

Some of them are a bit over the top like this one on the road to Callanish.

So I'm looking for ideas of what to use for my mailbox. I've got a good solid square built gatepost that I could attach it to which is probably ideally suited for an old microwave, just about the right size. Anyone got any ideas about what I could use? Answers on a postcard please........