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29 October 1998 Edition

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Postman Pat

BY EOGHAN MacCORMAIC

I see that An Post have just issued a new edition of stamps to commemorate various post boxes used over the last century and a half in Ireland. Very pleasant too. I've long had an interest in post boxes, and I have to confess that to me a post box is more than a hole into which you drop the odd letter and the odd bundle of Christmas cards. No, in the Irish scenario, a post box is a reflection of history.

Somebody bought me a present last week of a full sheet of the new stamps, knowing my interest in them and I duly framed the trophy and placed it on the mantlepiece. Every time I look at it it does my heart good to see all those green boxes. I don't care what Connolly said, when he scorned the idea of freedom as being no more than painting the boxes green, in aesthetic and political terms give me a green box any day over one of those red Royal mail pillar boxes.

Mind you, the pillar box itself is an endangered species if I'm not mistaken. Co-inciding with the arrival of the stamps to celebrate the diversity of the boxes, I've notices a few gaping holes in the streetscape where handsome round boxes once stood. Ripped out by progress, the pillar box is being replaced by what can only be described as a huge iced lolly on a stick, green livery of course, but as shapelessy modern as the pillar box was strikingly historic. I'm worried.

What odds, you may ask, what shape the post boxes have? The important thing is that they can hold the letters secure until An Post arrives to collect them. Fair enough. But what of all the poor bewildered tourists who - in the mistaken and forlorn belief that Ireland has the greatest distribution of postboxes per capita in Europe - happily drop their holiday post cards into street litter bins, also painted a bright colour of green. I'm surprised the EC has allowed us to change the boxes unilaterally. Or maybe the change is a directive. Maybe, soon, all the boxes will be replaced by the lollies and painted blue with yellow stars. I'm even more worried.

The collection of stamps just published shows four of the older boxes still in use; a tall square free-standing box, with a crown on top, one with SE (Saorstat Éireann) on the door, a fat double pillar box from the turn of the century and a hexagonal pillar box from 130 years ago. Crafty observors will note that all of the boxes are legacies of British rule in Ireland and throughout the country, on remote corners, sunk into ivy covered walls, or in once busy streets of villages in decline you'll find these boxes. Many have crowns and VR worked into their crest, or ER or GR...Victoria Regina, Edward and George Rex, titles as redundant in Ireland now as Tyrannosaurus Rex; the boxes are a living proof of predators who once stalked our country.

The Saorstat Éireann box is really a Free State door attached to a British box, a mongrel, with the crown above and the liberated door below. While such transitional boxes are few and far between there are seemingly thousands of the previous British boxes scattered all over the country. IN 1922 out went John Bull and in came Postman Pat a slap of green paint covered the red, and saved the fledgling state a fortune in replacing them.

Now, however, it looks as if a decision has been taken to modernise and replace old boxes. What is it all in aid of? Less cluttered streets? Uniformity? Preventing a rash of claims for back injury to postal workers? Who knows. What is clear, however, is that we run the risk soon of having one more vestige of British rule vanishing for ever, and in its place boring, PC street furniture. I never thought I'd see the day, but it's come. I don't want them to go. I want them to stay. I liked Victorian, Edwardian and Georgian boxes. They said something to me, they told me my past, they reminded me of what we wanted to forget. And they were prettier. Brits Out, that's what I say, but leave your boxes behind.

An Phoblacht
44 Parnell Sq.
Dublin 1
Ireland