After Stanley came home I started applying for jobs.

Lagom was closed for business and I needed to find a way to earn money again. But I was still very anxious about my capacity to do work, and about anything that would involve being away from home.

So my job search had a few strict criteria, including: proximity to my house, regular hours, and taking no work home.

That led me to a job for the Royal Mail, delivering mail and parcels to the west coast of Arran, 4 days a week.

The job advert said I’d be working in the open air and walking up to 16 miles a day. After spending months cooped up in Glasgow hospitals, I quite liked the sound of that. 

The reality isn’t all strolling down country lanes whistling a cheery tune of course. There’s a lot more sorting, carrying, dirt and sweat involved. 

The work is a mix of memory challenge, solving little puzzles every day, and physical endurance. 

At its best, I’ve found it very rewarding – grateful farmers coming out of their houses to meet me, knowing that I’d be bringing them that crucial bit of kit they’d been waiting for. But there are a lot of bumpy tracks, and delivering toilet rolls to empty holiday homes too.

There are 450 addresses on my route, almost all of which have individual Gaelic names rather than house numbers. After a few weeks on the same route I’d managed to memorise most of the house names and their sequence, and could sort the mail without reference to my notes.

Every day has felt like a race to get home. I imagine the longer you do the role, the less it feels like that. But for me, I’ve known that the consequence of any time wasted (by taking longer to sort the mail or load the van, or stopping to chat, or looping back round to deliver a missed parcel) would be felt at the end of each day. So I’ve always just pressed on, not once stopping for a break or lunch. 

On a good day I start at 8, I’m in my van on the road by 10, and home by 4. Some days I’m out much longer than that. Even on easier days I’ve still felt the pressure to get round quickly, when getting home by 3.30 might be the reward.

I’ve learned a little bit about a lot of people on my route. And I’ve learned to curse fiddly gates, sharp letter boxes and dogs.

I’ve been continuously impressed by my colleagues. They are relentlessly can-do, only occasionally grumpy, and I’ve been in awe of the depth of their knowledge about all the routes and people on the island, and their dedication to the task.

The work has prompted lots of thoughts about the service design of the Royal Mail, some of which appears to be extremely impressive, some of which leans too heavily on the memory and conscientiousness of individual members of frontline staff. But that’s for a different post.

This week is my last as a postman. I’m going to be moving on to a role that looks a bit more like the other things on my CV. I’ve sorted and delivered thousands of parcels and tens of thousands of letters over the last few months. I’d happily do it again.