I completed a total of 49 years total service with Royal Mail, starting out as a telegraph messenger at Grays Essex in 1953. I served 2 years compulsory National Service in the army ( R.A.O.C.) . Afterwards I returned back to the G.P.O. in January 1958 after demob, now as a postman. I learned to drive the mail vans from June 1958, & from September 1962 I served by delivering mail to a rural area out at Dunsden in South Oxfordshire until my retirement date. The people out there were fantastic , & became friends with many of them.