Sunday 1 August 2010

Please Mr Postman

My Postman has a groupie.

ME.

It's not him I’m after exactly. It's more to do with what he can give me.

Not that I don’t love my postman. I do. He is awfully friendly. If he sees me outside when he comes by he always has a conversation and even drives his motorbike up the driveway to hand deliver the mail.

My fascination with the postman goes back a long way. It all started when I was four. It was my job to collect the mail every day and I used to stand guard at the mail box waiting for the postman's bicycle to come down the street. I took this task very seriously. Of course in those days I wasn’t so interested in the mail just the small white packet of spearmint leaves he would give me every now and then. A gift which became all the more sweeter because my older sisters were at school and I never had to share.

How times have changed. These days the postman would get locked up for doing the same thing and my mother would be denounced for allowing her child so much sugar from a perfect stranger.

So, I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for postmen. Even though when I lived in the UK for some years my interest waned. Homes in the UK don't seem to have mailboxes as we do here. The post is put through your front door (and you don't need alarm clocks because the thud of mail wakes you up every morning). I assume it has something to do with the weather and keeping the mail dry but it can't be too easy for the postal service delivering mail this way.
The mailman in the village I lived in Scotland walked the mail everywhere which I guess is the only way to do it if you have to go into people’s yards or upstairs to their front door bypassing pets and children's toys along the way.
I now love getting mail even though my current mailman doesn’t bring me sweets or anything in unmarked paper bags.

He brings me something way better.
Competition wins.

While googling a couple of months ago I happened to come across a competition site (yes Lisleman that is just one of the reasons why I'm a slack blogger). You register on the site. It gives you links to all the competitions available online and you enter. Easy.

I just entered a few of them and left it at that.

About six weeks later the mailman delivered a box set of Sex and the City. My first competition win.
So I entered some more.

Then the mailman delivered jewellery, makeup, a huge amount of perfume, movie tickets, books and so on.

I now take about ten minutes a week and enter competitions. You don’t even have to buy a postage stamp because the competitions are all entered online and take moments.

Anyway, it’s worth checking out. Someone has to win. I use an Australian site which wouldn’t suit most of you but I am sure if you Google competitions sites you might get to fancy your postman as much as I do mine.

There's still something about the postman delivering an unexpected package that gives me goosebumps.....now can you see why I hang around my mailbox waiting for the postman?

So how does the Postman deliver your mail? Mailbox, front door, post office, carrier pigeon...

18 comments:

  1. I love getting post. This village doesn't have a proper delivery. Every so often a van comes from the main post office in Milas and dumps village post on a table outside the teahouse. Then people will come and rummage through it to find stuff for them. My neighbour (a deaf and dumb guy) spends his days at the teahouse so he looks out for post for me and delivers it to my door. It's an unreliable system though so I also have a postbox in the Milas post office, where a really nice man looks after any packages in his desk drawer if they won't fit in my box.

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  2. My mailman "borrows" *cough* my New Yorker magazine. I get it back with mustard on it. :-)

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  3. Living in Dalkeith the postman here delivers, roughly, about once a month. Or it just seems like it. I don't know why, it's not the worst job in the world - it's better than walking the streets...

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  4. I´m sure those competition sites would not deliver to Paraguay, so it´s a nice dream. Our mail is slow coming too. I heard a blog friend sent me a package from South Africa about a month ago....and still nothing!!
    Sometimes I´m lucky (like when you sent those DVD´s), but others the package never arrives (like the one my daughter sent me for mother´s day....still not there).
    We don´t get our mail delivered to our doorstep either. We have a post office box at the mail office and that´s where we pick it up ourselves.

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  5. Lilly you're not a slack blogger. You probably just have better control over your blogging urge than most.

    Our mail is dropped into a box next to the curb by the postman driving a delivery truck. I grew up with the mail being dropped into a slot in the door. That postman was on foot. The delivery is certain to change as they are having expense issues all the time. Much less physical mail goes through the system today.

    Maybe the postal systems around the world should promote competitions.

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  6. You lucky girl!!!! I recently won a blogger giveaway and LOVED getting the package. It made my day. But a competition site-- I yiyi, I'd never see the light of day if I started that ;-)

    Our mail is delivered via a slot in our outside wall which means it falls into the house and instantly scatters all over the floor.

    Happy mail watching Lily!
    xo jj

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  7. Congrats on your wins! As you say, in the UK, we get our mail delivered directly to the front door unless you live in a flat, where it is all delivered to your post box in the lobby.

    Here in Sweden, if you live in a house, it's left in your mailbox.

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  8. Oh dear ... a competition site! Just what I need to keep me completely and forever glued to my computer!

    I have lived so many places it would be next to impossible to tell you how I received mail ... every conceivable way except carrier pigeon or stagecoach.

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  9. I love ordering something online and then getting it delivered. It's that "ohhh, Christmas" kind of feeling. Lol. But I bet it's better your way, because it's even more of a surprise.

    Mail gets delivered to a mailbox to the left of my front door. But if it's a package, I tend to have it delivered to my office, because there's always someone there to sign for it if I'm not in.

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  10. Our postman is called Ian and is a lovely man If we're out he leaves any mail too big for the letter box hidden behind a flower tub so we wont have to go to the sorting office to collect One day he even threw a parcel through an open window !
    Also being a postman/woman is great fun although Lisleman thought I was telling porkies when I said I'd delivered Christmas mail when in 6th form at school

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  11. Ooohh! Freebies?? Let me at them!

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  12. oh thanks for the tip on competitions websites Lilly, sounds like fun, especially if you win something! Will check it out.

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  13. It is interesting about The Postman---OR, in my case, my regular person is a Woman. She is very nice and when I have outgoing mail I leave a little note on my mailbox, asking the "postperson" to ring my bell. (I had outgoing mail stolen a number of years ago and cannot leave it out there anymnore...) She and the relief PostMAN are wonderful about this, I'm grateful to say---given that I can no longer go to the Post Office. Up here in the Hills, they have to drive a smallish Mail Truck to get from House to House----Down in the 'flats' the Mail people walk with a little cart-on-wheels from building to building---leaving their Truck parked while they do this....I STILL look forward to the mail, though it is mostly people wanting you to buy something or donate money. I rarely actually receive a letter anymore, which is kind of depressing....! The paper wasted on all this so called Junk Mail, us really atrocious, isn't it?

    I love that your Mailman when you were a child, left you Spearmint Gum sometines..How really sweet and thoughtful.

    Lilly dear, thanks so much for your caring words about Sweetie--I pray they can figure out ALL that is going on and help him to get on the road to Health, once again. AND get him home to me, SOON!!!

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  14. I'm having a terrible time keeping up with my blogging. I don't think I'd have much luck with those contest things.

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  15. I'm the slacker blogger if I have to define one. Not because of laziness though. Just not having much time for myself these days.

    I enjoyed reading about your childhood friendship with your mailman and how you took your job so seriously. That's so cute.

    Here where I live, our mail gets delivered at the curbside mailbox. If there's a large package that doesn't fit into the mailbox, the mailman comes banging at the door and rudely wakes me up from my sleep. I work the nightshift, you see. That's why I sleep during the day. Tehehe.

    I love entering sweepstakes also, but I just haven't have the time. Enjoy yours, Lily.

    Tasha

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  16. oh please share the link Lilly ...you got to be in it to win it !
    I'm glad you are winning surprise packages in the post are so exciting.

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  17. If you are open to having a guest blog poster please reply and let me know. I will provide you with unique content for your blog, thanks.

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Thanks for your comments.