The Post Office and Alan Johnson.

Alan Johnson; MP.

I suppose in a kind of a way this is a bit political; but what is politics – or what are politics? They are our every day relationships and meetings with people. 

I mean if you never read anything more than the 'red top' newspapers or listened only to snatches of news on a pop music radio station you will believe all the BS that the barrack room politician, the loud mouth in the pub – you know the one with the loudest voice who's only argument to your point of view is a very loud Wrong!! - you will believe all that: that immigrants are taking your jobs, that we - the royal we – are paying for all that.

Well, you know that kind of stuff is not true – but that's not all I want to say. 

There he is above – Alan Johnson, MP – the Right Honourable Alan Johnson, I might add; Right Honourable meaning that he held high office in the British Government and he is a member of the privy council which means he is or was, privy to all the top top secret top secrets of this country. 

If that isn't all correct look it up and write in.

He has a similar profile to mine except that he passed the 11+ and I sat through it. I had to get my 'O' levels (and an A/O level) years later and then only because I was interested in the subjects – Sociology, English Literature and Film Studies (that was the A/O and the hardest).

He went to work at the post office when he was 18; I started to wind down my career at the post office at that age as it was mandatory for us to leave the telegram motor bike delivery service then and become a postman, I did not want to be a postman but I stayed for 3 years and still can't believe it.

But my point here is that in those days everything was done by hand at the post office apart from the automatic machine for date stamping the letters. And that automatic date stamper – or whatever it was called – had to have the date changed by a very trusted supervisor; a postman higher grade or a PHG – or even an Inspector - and why?

Let me tell you.

On the walls of the sorting offices were big signs warning us that we were not allowed by law to do the fixed odds football pools. And I can hear people from other countries saying 'call that a free country' etc or what are the pools?

The Fixed Odds were what they say – fixed odds. Every football match on the coming Saturday fixture list had odds for the outcome – betting odds. All legit. All Kosher. If you wanted to take part you would get the fixed odds coupon from a newsagents or the like, look at the fixtures for the coming week and then predict what the results would be, say Manchester City to beat Manchester Utd having odds of 2-1 or Utd to beat City having odds of 3-1.

Then you would put a stamp on the envelope and mail it but . . . . if you worked at the post office what you could do was get the envelope on the Friday, put it through the date stamping machine and then put it in your pocket. Then on Saturday you see the football results, fill your fixed odd pools coupon with the correct results, put your postal order in the envelope and then put it in the mail when you go back to work on Monday. 

Simple. 

The pools company would see that you've won, check that the stamp on the envelope is date stamped prior to the date of the matches and hey presto!

To be honest I can't remember anybody doing it or even heard of it but the opportunity was there.

In those days letters would be delivered to every part of Britain by the next day. That's if they were fully paid (or first class) and the second class would get delivered the day after.

That's all it took. That's when the post office was run by the government before it was made into a corporation by the Conservative Government in 1970. The first thing they did was to sack the chairman and then later in 1970 there was a short post office strike. In 1971 there was another strike which lasted about 6 weeks which coincided with the introduction of decimalisation – you know no longer 240 pennies to the pound but 100 new pence or eventually pence and if they'd have left it at that or maybe left the post office as a governmental organisation with all the workers being civil servants my auntie may have had testicles and been my uncle; who knows?
That's why you will never see the first decimalisation stamps with the first day date stamp on them - unless, well I've explained it above.

I mention Alan Johnson as he is an inspiration; he was orphaned as a child and he and his sister fought to stay together (she was 16) in their house and that's what they did. He got a job as a postman and eventually joined the UPW (which I did) then he became a Labour MP and eventually Home Secretary after other cabinet jobs; Home Secretary being one of the big four jobs in the government.

I kind of listened to his accent – which is a well spoken North London one – when I was doing my cockney accent for the play I did last week; I kind of took something from him but eventually did all the bits of the London accent except for the glockel-stop.

Bit ironic really as I had promised myself that when I came back from America I wouldn't do any accents in my work; you never hear them in America (apart from being done very badly) unless it's Meryl Streep, and because you are not putting an accent on, it makes the naturalism in your performance easier. 

There is always a little bit of an impersonation, a caricature in a performance if you have to do an accent which I hope I overcame on Saturday when I did my secret play. 

20 pages of a monologue all learned - that's why I didn't write anything here lately.