Johnson - Please, Mister Postman

Contents

In July 1969, while the Rolling Stones played a free concert in Hyde Park, Alan Johnson and his young family left West London to start a new life. The Britwell Estate in Slough, apparently notorious among the locals, in fact came as a blessed relief after the tensions of Notting Hill, and the local community welcomed them with open arms.

Alan had become a postman the previous year, and in order to support his growing family took on every bit of overtime he could, often working twelve-hour shifts six days a week. It was hard work, but not without its compensations the crafty fag snatched in a country lane, the farmers wife offering a hearty breakfast and even the mysterious lady on Glebe Road who appeared daily, topless, at her window as the postman passed by...

Please, Mister Postman paints a vivid picture of England in the 1970s, where no celebration was complete without a Party Seven of Watneys Red Barrel, smoking was the norm rather than the exception, and Sunday lunchtime was about beer, bingo and cribbage. But as Alans life appears to be settling down and his career in the Union of Postal Workers begins to take off, his close-knit family is struck once again by tragedy...

Moving, hilarious and unforgettable, Please, Mister Postman is another astonishing book from the award-winning author of This Boy.

Alan Johnson was born in May 1950. He was General Secretary of the Communication Workers Union before entering Parliament as Labour MP for Hull West and Hessle in 1997. He served as Home Secretary from June 2009 to May 2010. Before that, he filled a wide variety of cabinet positions in both the Blair and Brown governments, including Education and Health. His first memoir, This Boy, was first published in May 2013. It won the RSL Ondaatje Prize and the Orwell Prize.

This Boy

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First published in Great Britain
in 2014 by Bantam Press
an imprint of Transworld Publishers

Copyright Alan Johnson 2014

Alan Johnson has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders. We apologize for any errors or omissions and will be pleased to make the appropriate acknowledgements in future editions.

Extract from Slough, from Collected Poems by John Betjeman 1955, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1968, 1970, 1979, 1981, 1982, 2001; reproduced by permission of John Murray, an imprint of Hodder and Stoughton Ltd. Extract from Toads, from Collected Poems by Philip Larkin the Philip Larkin Estate; reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd. Extract taken from Leisure, from Complete Poems by W. H. Davies; reproduced by permission of Jonathan Cape. Extract taken from Dont Jump Off the Roof, Dad. Words and Music by Cy Coben. Copyright 1960 Delamore Music. Copyright renewed 1988. All Rights Administered by BMG Rights Management (US) LLC. All Rights Reserved Used by Permission. Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard Corporation. Extract from Vita Lampada by Henry Newbolt. Extract taken from In Memory of W. B. Yeats, from Collected Poems, by W. H. Auden; reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781473508019
ISBN 9780593073414 (hb)

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In memory of Mike Whitaker

ITS CHRISTMAS EVE 1967. A Saturday. Four oclock in the afternoon. Im waiting for Mike.

Mrs Kennys large flat in Hamlet Gardens, Hammersmith, is empty except for me, cocooned in the room I rent at the elbow of the L-shaped passage.

I am seventeen years old, a shelf-stacker at Anthony Jacksons supermarket on the Upper Richmond Road in East Sheen a temporary measure, I tell myself, to fill the interval between school and rock stardom. Ahead lies 1968, plump with promise. I am convinced that for the band Im with, the In-Betweens, this will be the year we hit the big time.

What actually lay ahead in 1968 was the end of my nascent music career, marriage, fatherhood, a new job as a postman and a return to my home turf London W10.

Anthony Jacksons had closed that lunchtime. Johnny Farugia, its larger-than-life Maltese manager, had taken his devoted staff (Kath, Sandra and me) to the pub opposite for a Christmas drink.

The store was more of a self-service corner shop than a fully fledged supermarket, but its single cash register had been ringing almost permanently throughout the Christmas period. Wed worked hard and our boss wanted to show his appreciation. I explained that I had to be home by 3.30pm because Mike, my brother-in-law, was picking me up in his Rover 110 to drive me to Watford, where I was to spend Christmas with him, my sister Linda and my four-month-old niece.

Johnny Farugia fussed over us in the pub, insisting on buying all the drinks. After clinking our glasses in a Christmas toast he distributed our presents.

Hard work is all I asking, he announced in the English that remained eccentric after fifteen years in the country he adored. (You fuckin Brits, you dun deserve dis country. Always you moan. You dun appreciate wad you got.)

I knew what my present was as soon as I saw the shape of the package. Johnny was well aware that I idolized the Beatles. Hed heard me wax lyrical about Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, the album that had astounded and delighted the world on its release in June, becoming the soundtrack to the summer of love. And wed stood together in the warehouse at the back of the store, like mourners at a funeral, as A Day in the Life, the final song on the album, wafted its beauty from the big, blue portable radio. During the year the pirate stations that had been our only source of continuous pop had been outlawed by an Act of Parliament and Radio 1 had been launched by the BBC to replace them. In a final act of defiance, Radio London had gone off the air to the strains of this track, which had been banned by the BBC on the grounds that it glorified the drug LSD. Dear old Auntie apparently had no such reservations about another number from the album, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, which they happily and unsuspectingly played.

The highlight of the three-channel television schedules that Christmas was to be the Beatles Magical Mystery Tour film on Boxing Day, the soundtrack for which had been released as a six-track EP (extended play) disc.

My magical mystery Christmas present had cost Johnny Farugia 19s 6d. I knew that because the Fab Four had insisted that the record must be sold for under a quid. The band always showed huge consideration for their fans, rarely lifting singles (or even B sides) from their albums, printing the lyrics on their LP sleeves (commonplace now but unheard of prior to