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A Nottinghamshire village’s postie who once helped to foil a burglary is preparing to hang up her keys after nearly 40 years of service. Mary Dainton, 67, says “the job has changed” since she first started doing rounds in the Newark village of East Markham 37 years ago.
Born in Mapperley, Mrs Dainton lived in East Markham from the age of six until moving out when she was 23. The village was always a special place for Mrs Dainton, who quickly snapped up the opportunity to take on the East Markham round when it became vacant just a year after she had joined Royal Mail.
Those decades of service have meant that with her distinctive flash of pink hair, Mrs Dainton is known affectionately across the village simply as ‘Mary the Post’. As she prepares for her last day on May 31, Mrs Dainton said: “A lot of people in the village have become friends.
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“I just love the village and the people in it, I’ve said to people ‘you’re my East Markham family’. I’ve seen kids growing up and having their own kids, kids born and then going to school and wondering where those five years went.
“I love my job, I really do, but it’s time to hang my keys up. It’s not a decision I’ve taken lightly, but I think it’s the right time.
“The job’s changing, it’s not what it used to be. It’s all about money and how fast you can earn that money for them now, not the postie who goes round and makes sure people are all right.”
One of Mrs Dainton’s more dramatic moments as East Markham’s postie came when she foiled a burglary in the village. Pulling into a drive during her rounds, a burglar alarm went off and Mrs Dainton noticed a car facing towards her van.
She said: “Four men had picked up a gas bottle and smashed the French windows of the house but when they heard me coming, they stopped and started driving towards me in this car. I backed off because I thought ‘there’s four of them and one of me’.
“I thought there was bound to be a car passing as I pulled out but there was nothing on that A57, so I had to let them go, but I used the phone at the police house to alert the police and they caught them in the end in Sheffield.” With her last day rapidly approaching, Mrs Dainton says she has no intentions of staying in bed beyond her current time of 5.45am.
Her husband Darrell, who she met at work, will still be doing his rounds and Mrs Dainton says she still needs to get her 10 miles of steps in every day. Asked how she will feel doing the rounds for the last time, Mary the Post added: “I’ll probably be mush for the rest of the day. I’ll just speak to everybody and make the most of it being my last day.”
