Roger Rabbits with Jim Bunny

 She was flustered, and flapping and breathless when she strode into the office last week. And a bit pissed, angry pissed of course.

It was the day El Nino has sucked the last skerrick of respite from the atmosphere. It was a stinker, 30 degrees Celsius. We were all in meltdown. Florid faces, soggy armpits and irritable.

Our visitor was vigorously fanning herself. “The weather?” I presumed politely. “The evil El?” I asked. “No, the Post Office.”

The Post Office, really? That much vaunted and loved institution. That most trusted and dependable servant of the people. That monument to the role of the state in our day-to-day lives. “Pfft” she spat. “Pfft.”

What had triggered her irritation was news the Post Office is closing its central city services in the Paper Plus store at the bottom of Grey St.

Tauranga doesn’t take kindly to losing services – especially postal services. Remember the right old stink over the closure of the Greerton post shop in 2018. The village seethed, was on the brink of mobility scooter insurrection. We take great comfort from having a Post Shop on the main street. And we enjoy getting in a lather over the cost of a stamp and the time it takes for letter to get from A to B. That’s the way it’s always been. 

“But the Tauranga CBD is the heart of the country’s fastest growing economy,” protested our flustered visitor. “The fifth biggest city. And no central city post shop. Really? How does that happen?” I suspect the march of progress has probably made victims of us all.

Jim Bunny scrambles, fearlessly seeking the truth. And finds it. The signs are all over the Post Shop, and Paper Plus windows declare darkly: “BUILDING SOLD CLOSING DOWN”. And the same solemn declaration on the door of the post box lobby next door. “BUILDING SOLD CLOSING DOWN”. Bald, bold and bare.

I make a discreet inquiry. Where’s the shop going? “Nowhere!” I am told.

Scoping

NZ Post was a little more positive. It says discreetly it’s “scoping” an alternative and suitable new CBD location. “Scoping” we take to mean assessing or investigating. Plenty of empty shops in the CBD. And while there are no guarantees, NZ Post “appreciates the importance of this location to the local community”.

But I was told “this is it” ….as in when this shop goes, it’s over. At very best we’ll get some much reduced services, whatever that means.

Outside a disgruntled customer read the sign and offered this gem. “Stamp, lick, SUCK!” Pardon? I didn’t understand but I got the feeling.

Just round the corner in Red Square the I-Site, a flash industry name for an information centre, boldly declares in its window that “…with over $1.5 billion worth of investment over the coming years, our city centre is in the middle of  an economic, cultural and social renaissance….”

Stirring stuff. Does that renaissance include the new tattoo parlour on Devonport Rd? After closing day on Thursday, March 28, you won’t be able to buy a stamp but you can get another stamp like ‘Mum’, ‘Dad’ or ‘Jim Bunny’ etched permanently on your parts.

Our office visitor is gesticulating again. “I understand the renaissance – truly wonderful. But what about all the new people who’ll flood the CBD – office workers, apartment-dwellers. How will they get their mail, how will they buy a stamp to send a letter or a parcel? How will they pay their bills, their rates and their car registration?”

Let’s be fair, there are other Post Office shops on Cameron Rd by 7th Ave, Brookfield and Cherrywood.

More “pfft-ing” from the visitor. “People in the CBD don’t want to make an all-day outing to find a stamp and post a letter. Who else makes two bus trips to buy a stamp?”

Critical mass

I am ‘reliably informed’ the post shop closure is about critical mass. In simplistic nuclear physics terms critical mass refers to the minimum amount of fissile material necessary to create a nuclear explosion.

This is more about a fuss than nuclear fission. Because in stamp and letter terms I think critical mass means the least amount of customers and business required to sustain the venture. And that, I am told, won’t happen until 2028.

All this paints an even sadder picture about the loss of the art of letter writing. Nothing charges the spirits like an unexpected hand-written envelope amongst the bills and unsolicited crap in the letterbox. A letter is a gift – someone thinks enough of you to invest their time, effort and emotion. A letter tells us we are important to that person.

I am sure the romance of letter writing is not lost, it just needs to be re-ignited. If we all bought ourselves a Croxley and an HB, and wrote a few letters, we’d get and give enormous pleasure. And save another Post Shop from the creeping, nuclear-charged menace of critical mass. Email: hunter@thesun.co.nz