Postie's demise heralds end of world we knew

Perhaps everyone through the ages feels the same, but right now, as New Zealand Post warns our postal delivery days are set to be chopped in half, I can't help but feel like everything good I grew up with is being stripped away.

And when I say good, I mean simple and old-school. I mean the small things in life that we reflect on fondly, in the same way we love orange-tinged, out-of-focus photos from the 1970s, even though the quality is terrible.

In the way life seemed better when socks were darned instead of replaced, when clothes cost twice as much but never said "Made in China" and it was safe to kick kids out the front door at dawn and tell them to use their imagination to pass the time till dusk.

Among those memories is the excitement of seeing the postman slowly moving down the street towards our letterbox, bringing with him the promise of letters from grandma or parcels at Christmas time among the bills and other boring ephemera addressed to mum.

When I was little, letters mattered. They came handwritten with wonky stamps and with unremarkable regularity. There was no quick email or text message to say "thanks for dinner". If you appreciated something, you picked up a pen and engaged the postal service to assist.

I remember the sweet pain of opening birthday presents from distant aunties, knowing that as wonderful as it was to get the goodies, it then meant sitting at the dinner table with a pen and paper to write out thank you cards.

These days my nephews just flick me a text or email. They get off the hook way too easily.

I understand the economic realities of these communication changes on our postal service. But that doesn't mean I have to like them.

I can't help wondering, in a chicken-and-egg way, just what came first: the demise of the postie ... or the changes made by management that led to his demise.

For a start, I went to post a letter yesterday and it cost me 70 cents for a stamp. I just about fell over. For several years now, I have been buying books of stamps among other transactions at the post office. The stamps came without a price printed on each of them, so I'd been living in a dream world where I thought every letter I posted still cost 40 cents.

Given prices have almost doubled, it's little wonder people are opting for electronic communication wherever possible. Even my fuel card company told me (by email, of course) that from now on I'd be charged $5 every time I got a bill in the mail, although they were happy to email one out free of charge. Guess what I chose?

The upshot of the downturn of the postal service is that yesterday I got a handwritten letter in the mail, and then realised on closer inspection it was also hand-delivered. A friend with a new baby had taken the time to walk around the neighbourhood dropping off all her thank you cards personally. Aside from saving herself a small fortune in the process, she had also given me a glimpse into a future that could potentially benefit from the demise of the postman.

Perhaps there will come a time when posting a letter is so expensive, and the delivery so slow, that it simply becomes more realistic to drop things off by hand.

Then all that's needed for a full reset is an e-terrorism act so great it wipes out all digital communication. Then we would have to pick up the phone and ring people or - heaven forbid - pay them a visit.