This was actually quite shocking. I clearly had not been to a Post Office in years. Needing variety in envelopes, 'Jiffy' bags and stamps I did try and get the stationary from the Post Office. But it cost an absolute fortune.

I thought envelopes cost mere pennies, a fraction of the price of a stamp. But no, at the Post Office they cost more than the stamps.

It was also costlier in time than I thought it would be, lunchtimes weren't grab-a-sandwich-and-sit-at-the-desk, I would be out for half an hour or more if a full postal visit was needed.

After a while I started buying stamps elsewhere and using the stack of envelopes I purchased some time back in 2007. In this way I could avoid spending inordinate amount of time in the dingy Post Office. A lot of the stamps I bought this way were really old, pre-dating the 2012 Olympics. I got the feeling that nobody is buying stamps any more.

Not so recently the post in the UK was delivered before people set off for their working day, then it all got a bit more casual. Then before that there was a time when people could have half a dozen or more separate deliveries in a day. It won't be long before we no longer have Saturday deliveries and envelopes become a quaint speciality item, generally available 'free' with birthday cards but otherwise as hard to obtain as perforated dot-matrix printer paper.