Michael Moynihan: Christmas a reminder that the postman is a vital part of our community
The File That Represents Eamonn Benevolent, Postman Said At Ireland Been Munication Most Gentle Photo: A It's Its State Of Facilitator The Farrell/photocall
You may be familiar with this sentence, long associated with the US Postal Service. It’s a bit grandiose — not surprising, it’s a slightly cannibalised extract from Herodotus’s Histories. We’ll leave the apparent affront to grammar to one side (‘neither’ used with four different items?) in favour of general approval of the sentiment.
One reason for that approval is the small matter of a milestone for our part of Cork this Christmas season. Our postman Tony is retiring and will be a loss to all of us.
There are obvious reasons for our generalised fondness for the mail carrier, to use an Americanism. In the age of Zoom and Teams and email there is still that stubborn appreciation for physical post. Yes, much of it may be bills and requests for payment, but even those are a little easier to take than the insistent beep of a text reminding you to fork over amount X by date Y at the following link Z.
What could be more effective at reducing any sense of humanity? Contrast those unfeeling digital reminders with encountering your local postman at the front door — the friendly inquiry, the handover, the farewell: all elements of basic human contact.
For many years everyone in our part of Cork, in our community, has benefited in this way because our postman was part of that community. Tony’s presence wasn’t just a reassuring one for the most obvious reason — the post getting to its intended destination — but because he engaged with those on his route, chatting to those he met and discussing matters pertinent to the area. You can’t overstate the importance of that kind of contact for people.
Everyone is well aware of the way society has splintered and deteriorated. There’s a very good reason the word ‘enshittification’ was selected as word of the year by Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary; the definition it uses for the word will surely resonate with every reader: ‘the gradual deterioration of a service or product brought about by a reduction in the quality of service provided, especially of an online platform, and as a consequence of profit-seeking.
Regular human contact, even the briefest of chats with your postman, counteracts that. Contact fights the creeping dehumanisation that your smartphone inflicts on you. Contact results in far better outcomes: instead of trying to convince yourself that your Twitter spat or TikTok cosplay is reality, the cumulative effect of real-life interactions helps us to a simple but effective realisation. You are part of a community.
Such interactions may not grab many headlines — in comparison with abstract discussions about measures to improve urban areas, or academic studies of social theory, they probably pass unnoticed. But they are foundational for that sense of a shared space, those little nods, chats, and acknowledgements which build togetherness.
Community is bolstered by participation and involvement, which can take different forms. Take an obvious example: someone who is walking an area day in day out, like a postman, notices things about that area by simply being present.
The elderly person who has not been seen for some days and whose post is piling up in the hallway. The particular bottleneck on the road which delays the buses every morning. The broken footpath by the traffic lights which has not been repaired and which is now deteriorating, endangering pedestrians. The cars which time and again park illegally and dangerously near the primary school. The unmelted ice hidden by the street light, which might fell an elderly walker or unwary schoolchild.
These are all observed by the postman. It might be a more cost-effective and accurate exercise for local authorities to cease hiring expensive consultants to come from faraway places to evaluate the value of urban projects. They could lean on the expertise of a consultant who’s far more familiar with the city and readily available.
Just ask the local postman.
It's been said that the postman represents the State at its most benevolent, a gentle facilitator of communication as opposed to, say, a policeman coming into conflict with people while enforcing the laws.
There’s something to that. The success of the postal system is one of the great triumphs of the modern age when you take a step back and view it in a historical context, and not just as a global delivery mechanism.
There’s a clear indication of how embedded that system is in the collective psyche when the State proposes to close a post office. There are reasonable economic reasons for doing so, in fairness, but people react viscerally to such proposals because they know what losing a post office means.
In small towns or villages it’s not just a matter of travelling to the nearest small town or village to use their facilities, it’s the gap that’s left behind when their neighbourhood post office shuts down.
And it is a gap. Every time a post office shuts down in a rural area one hears the same lament about the inconvenience to those collecting their pensions, and there’s a strong reason for that. Just as a postman is a vital person in the community, the post office is a vital location in the community and the argument about collecting pensions is made again and again because it’s true.
When the post office in High Street, near this columnist’s home in Cork, was closed two years ago, activist Paddy O’Brien pointed out that local pensioners would incur extra costs travelling to the new location to collect their pensions. He added that they would be nervous afterwards, carrying cash in an unfamiliar neighbourhood.
The financial cost is bad enough, but removing a public space which was safe and welcoming, used by one’s peers and handily located, is particularly grievous.
There are now plenty of alternatives to the postman. Readers will be familiar with the alphabet soup of private delivery services, but I have yet to hear anyone talk fondly of the impact of such operators on matters such as traffic, parking, and, in some cases, the reliable arrival of purchased goods.
The gradual transformation of letter and parcel delivery, from the personalised touch of the postman to privatised anonymity, has not been an unqualified success: let us be charitable and leave it there.
Cork people are fond of their postmen. In this year’s local elections, Honore Kamegni was elected to Cork City Council after 14 years delivering the mail.
He said after his victory:
“So when I went back to most of them, they remembered me and they were very happy to see me standing and to be able to continue to serve them in a different field this time.”
The same as those of us who were always happy to see our postman.
Enjoy the retirement, Tony. You earned it.