POSTIE'S DISPATCH 25 September 2026

Shelter of a Sort

Postie took refuge from the weather in a phone box that gave up being useful long before he was hatched.

A plump gull wearing a navy postal cap with a red band and gold POST panel, satchel over his shoulder, sheltering inside an old red phone box on a rainy Scottish harbour front, rain visible falling at an angle outside the glass.

The rain came in sideways off the firth and I made a dignified sprint for the old phone box by the harbour wall, the one nobody has put a phone in since long before my time. It still says it will connect you to somebody. It will not. It connects you to a smell of damp coin and old adverts curling off the glass, and on a day like today, to shelter, which I have decided is enough.

I stood in there a good while, satchel held close, watching the rain go past sideways rather than down, which seemed to me an unnecessary flourish on the weather's part. A man walked by with his collar up and did not so much as glance in, which suited me fine. I was not there to be admired. I was there to keep a wedding invitation dry, and I did that job with some distinction.

There is a certain glamour gone out of these boxes, I think, though nobody asked my opinion on it and I am giving it anyway. Once they rang. Now they only shelter the occasional gull with better things to be doing. I do not mind standing in for whatever they used to be. Somebody has to.

When the worst of it passed I stepped back out, shook myself properly, and got on. The post does not deliver itself, glamorous box or no.