Doing your bit this Christmas?

I was just thinking back to Christmases in the old days

We always used to tip (always called it a Christmas Box ) all the people that came regularly to do a job - postman, milkman and bin men and occasionally the coalman (anyone remember them?).

We haven't had a milkman for years. He always used to bring the milk to the front door (about 100ft from the road). In the early days of living here, on Christmas week, I used to meet him out at the road to give him his tip and to give an apple to his horse. Not long after moving here his horse retired and he got an electric milk cart. He then used to drive in to the driveway and it saved him time . When he retired, aged 84, the new milkman said he wasn't allowed to come onto customer's land and we had to put a milk bucket up by the gateway. All the neighbours stopped giving him Christmas tips . Some years later, with him making a lot of mistakes in deliveries (the old milkman never made any) and a number of times with him trying to overcharge, everyone cancelled their contracts sand we all buy our milk from the supermarket or the village shop.

With the dustmen: in the days when we had metal bins (can't ever remember filling more than one bin per week) the dustmen came all the way down the drive to pick up the bin. They always got a big tip at Christmas. Then we were given wheelie bins and they had to be put out at the boundary. These are now left haphazardly all over the front and sometimes blocking the driveway. So nobody tips them any more.

The postman is different. He still delivers to the front door, we occasionally have a brief chat and laugh, he takes away any letters that need posting (we only need to put them sticking out of our letterbox), knows where to leave packages and does an excellent job. He still gets a good Christmas tip.

Times have changed, some for the better and some for the worse but Christmas seems less community based now.

 

That takes me back to the days when I had a stall on the market and used to take all the orders round after packing up for the day

 

@pete none of us could afford a camera in the 1950's when I was working the market so had to use someone else's photo.