After the Second World War my father signed up to Z reserve because it meant he got an extra eight shillings a week.
Nobody expected another war but there was another war and my father was called up to fight in Korea.
When he was away, my mother and I would go to Roundhay Park and on the way there was a postbox set into the stone wall of a field near the park and we would dutifully post letters to my father, hoping that he was okay.
For that reason I’ve always had an affiliation with and feeling of closeness to the very idea of postboxes.
It wasn’t until I was well into adulthood that I took notice of postboxes as I passed, subconsciously noticing old ones.
This one in upper Saint Martin’s Lane in London is a relatively rare King Edward VII postbox. It’s rare because King Edward VII only reigned for 10 years and they’re only about 200 such boxes in the UK.
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