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When stamps cost peanuts and letters sent from anywhere in the country dropped through your letterbox the following day?
Not like today when deliveries are unreliable, targets are missed, there’s a single delivery a day and second class mail lands in your hall every other day and never at weekends.
That’s without mentioning junk mail offering great deals on life assurance, up-front funeral payment plans and the like that goes straight in the recycling without being opened.
And what about the cost of sending a letter? A standard first class stamp will put you back £1.70, second class mail a still steep 87p.
The Royal Mail has been hit by greater competition – some would say unfair restrictions – since losing its monopoly, explaining the reason behind its woes.
These days, with the art of letter writing having flown out the window, it’s trying to stem its losses by pushing its parcel service, although that pits it against Amazon and online shops.
But were those times before competition was opened up in 2006 truly the good old days?
Removing those rose-tinted specs might just convince you otherwise.
Not for nothing have posties’ deliveries become known as snail mail.
It could well have been called slug mail during wet snaps, when those slimy enemies of all gardeners would chomp on envelopes and their contents in those iconic red postboxes.
And I remember a friend’s family receiving a letter in the 1980s that had been posted in the late 1800s, complete with a stamp bearing an image of Queen Victoria’s head.
Without the advent of computers and electronic communication, it was inevitable the Royal Mail’s letter delivery service would slump.
Maybe some people think it’s a shame that a service set up by Henry VIII when he invented a royal postal system for the court by creating the position of Master of the Posts in 1516 has been struggling 500 years down the line.
But, today you can type up and send an email in no time at all – and get a response within seconds.
Surely, instead of harking back to what was a great service of its time, we should embrace the advance in technology that has delivered instant communication.
