WHEN Fred Stanley first started work at Cockcroft Road Sub-post Office in Didcot, it was selling stamps marking the recent death of Sir Winston Churchill.

The grandfather-of-two has been a constant presence at the shop for 46 years and this week celebrated four decades as sub-postmaster.

Mr Stanley left work at a factory to start at the shop with his then brother-in-law Basil Evans in 1965 – the year of Churchill’s death – before becoming the sub-postmaster in 1971.

Now he takes on paper boys whose fathers and grand- fathers did the same work for him in years gone by.

Mr Stanley, 75, his son Mark, 43, and counter assistant Jennifer Trinder, have put in 115 years at the store. between them Mr Stanley’s wife of 53 years, Valerie, has also been helping out at the seven-days-a-week business.

Mr Stanley, who lives above the shop and gets up at 5.15am to sort out paper deliveries, said: “It has been a lifetime, and life goes quickly I suppose.

“The whole business has changed. The advent of computers means the workload is not as heavy as it used to be. The accounting is easier than when I used to do everything by hand.

“But they have taken away so much of what we used to do away from post offices – pension work, TV licences, and lots of other bits and pieces – that in the old days it was much busier.

“We used to have little gaggles of pensioners standing around chatting for half an hour.

“We have survived because we are good at what we do. It is a friendly sort of service, and we have always been a community store.

“We know nearly everybody because we have been local that long. We have made a lot of friends, and buried a few.”

Chris Gilding, from the Post Office, presented Mr Stanley with a plaque to mark his 40 years’ service.