December 10th Lights and Letter Boxes
- Martyn Offord
- Dec 10, 2020
- 2 min read
Think back to a baking summer in 2016 when we are having our sunroom built, a remarkable instance of forward thinking occurred. It was decided to install an outdoor electrical socket with built in electronic timer to power the Christmas Lights. It was felt the gadget should be discrete and so it was fitted at the bottom of the fence post. Ever since we have been looking forward to a global pandemic that would prompt the Crich community to light up homes and gardens, so we could fully utilise our discrete, very technically advanced timing system. Then corralled in our homes, we would sit cosily on a winter’s evening and admire the illuminations. What a pleasure they would be to the poor burdened postman labouring up our drive with sackfuls of gifts, to the jolly Amazon delivery man, to the merry Sainsbury’s online shopping driver and to the ruddy complexioned youngsters in socially distanced carol-singing groups not exceeding six bringing cheer to the indigent old folk shivering under a threadbare blanket before a single smouldering coal!

Now our technically advanced timer has enough settings to enable 24 sets of lights to come on at different times, to fuse the grid and to bring down aircraft. Discretely positioned at the bottom of the post, to set the timers necessitates lying face down in a puddle in a raincoat with water dripping off the peak of my cap, wet glasses steaming up and the screen of the device covered in condensation. One hand holds the soggy instructions, one hand holds up the varied focal glasses, one hand holds up the lid of the socket case and one hand presses button after button: modes, programmes, clock, hours, minutes, timer, on/auto/off, repeat, recall, launch, self-destruct. It’s well worth it for a twinkle which now twinks 30 minutes too early and goes off an hour too late. Another session prostrate in a puddle blindly fiddling looms.
We have also delivered Christmas cards and community leaflets all along our road. Most houses are blessed with steps, some with overhanging wet shrubbery, some appear not to have doors, some require bending and some reaching and all the nice modern doors have letterbox flaps as forgiving as the bite of a Staffordshire Bull Terrier with draught excluders inside to ensure post is bent and shredded before hitting the mat. Deirdre and I both agreed how helpful it was when houses had external letter boxes at the bottom of their drives or steps. After nearly 19 years of greeting our postman as he treks up our steep drive, round the bend and squeezes between the cars, did it occur to us that our own letter box is actually further from the road than any along The Common.
Today’s text Matthew 7. 3-5 about spotting motes in your brother’s eye when you have a plank in your own!
Well Martyn, that gave me a big laugh out moment - the thought of you grovelling in the wet sorting out your timers is still making me laugh. But you have done a great job. Fable Cottage is a beacon of light in a gloomy time.
I am grateful to Alan in the Market Place for advising us on Facebook to carry a letterbox-width rectangle of hardboard when we deliver leaflets and cards to assist getting the leaflet/card safely through the demon letterboxes. It worked magnificently for me this year, but on arrival home I determined that I will not be volunteering again to deliver anything. Another Community bit of my team work gone for ever....do I rejoice or weep?
Question of the day: if it takes 17 miles of walking, each day, for 1 refuse collector to complete the round of bins placed near the gates, how many miles a day does it take for a postman to complete the daily round of the letterboxes?…
Reminds me of my years as a paper-boy, learning how to fold the paper to penetrate the various letter boxes most effectively ..... and the large dog which used bound up and snatch it from the other side - until, that is, he bruised his nose badly when I withdrew the paper unexpectedly.