ONCE upon a time, the General Post Office boasted some of the most frightening female counter staff in Christendom, comparable to Boudica on a bad hair day or Catherine the Great when served vodka without ice.

They needed no protective screen to deter any upstart, no sound system to quell the masses. You stood to attention, listened and obeyed. Business was swiftly done – and you left. How times change!

This week I was in the St Aldate’s post office. There was a queue, generated by only three counter clerks being operational. I waited for the disembodied voice to summon me to a hatch. (In the past you waited for the clerk’s eyebrow to raise a centimetre or less.) My mission was to post my driving licence and supporting paperwork for its renewal. The envelope was too fat for the regulation slot.

The cheerful clerk went through my options, from a first-class stamp to an all-singing-and-dancing next-day delivery, fully insured package service. In spite of my favouring a middle way, the more expensive was pushed with the energy of a double-glazing salesperson.

Eventually I succumbed and prepared to leave, only to be restrained by her asking if I had considered car insurance with the Post Office. When was the renewal date of my current insurance? (Unknown.) What was the cost? (Same answer.) And what about over 50s’ life insurance? The Post Office offered peace of mind.

The queue lengthened. Feet shuffled. Eyes burned into my back. I was powerless as she pressed ahead with more enticements.

The only solution was to accept an all-explaining leaflet, make vague promises and leg it for the door, smiling weakly at a queue that now resembled Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow. The smile was not returned.

THE elegant figure of Green MEP candidate Caroline Lucas stood out in Cornmarket Street as she and her supporters encouraged the good people of Oxford to return her to Brussels.

“She has a nice smile,” commented one woman to her husband. “I think I’ll vote for her. You’d better explain to me what the Greens are trying to do once we get home.”

One of Dr Lucas’s helpers was a young mother complete with baby daughter. Was it time for the little one’s lunch, I asked?

It seemed a reasonable question bearing in mind the child was making a meal of one of the election brochures her mother was handing out. This mid-morning feast was attracting as much attention as the candidate herself.

Hardly the stuff on which hustings thrive, but while the public were there, they weren’t listening to other candidates promising the earth – or the saving of the same.

AS the anniversary of the death of Edgar George Wilson draws near – it will be the 120th on June 15 – I had a note from the niece of one of the two boys saved by the hapless Edgar before he was swept away by the Thames.

It came from Mrs Barbara Cox, of Oxford. Her uncle was Christopher Green, who, with 10-year-old Thomas Hazell had got into difficulties while fishing. She hopes to join a few of us at the memorial in honour of the dead man that stands beside the Thames Footpath near the railway bridge at Osney at 1pm on June 15. We hope more people will come. Mrs Cox never knew her uncle.

Christopher was an older member of a sizeable brood and she is the offspring of a younger one. He died in the First World War aged 36, long before her birth.