Stephen Jones: my Saturday job

The hat maker extraordinaire describes how a seasonal postal job led him to deliver a Christmas package with a difference
Hat maker Stephen Jones learned of the value of supportive workmates as a postie

I was a temporary postman for a few Christmases while growing up in Maidenhead, Berkshire. The regular postman used to have two or three people to help cover his normal round and he would sort the post into piles for us to deliver. Most of the houses had names rather than numbers and so you needed to know the district. Off I'd go on my old bicycle with a basket on the front, filled with piles of letters to post.

My main recollection is of delivering a letter bomb, but accidentally delivering it to the wrong address. T his was in the early 1970s when there was lots going on with the IRA. It had sent out 50 or 60 letter bombs to various people; some of them were primed and some weren't. They were all in A3 envelopes with "The Fisherman's Calendar" printed on the outside. How I remember this when I can't remember my own phone number, I'll never know.

There were two houses next to each other, Weir House and Weir Cottage. But the postman had put the envelope in the wrong pile, so I delivered it to the house instead of the cottage. There was this old boy who lived there. He'd been reading about the letter bombs in his Daily Telegraph, then his wife had brought in the post and on top was one of these calendars.

The first I knew about it was when I was cycling back to the sorting office and suddenly it was like a movie scene with police cars everywhere. I'll never know if the envelope did have explosives in it, but I recall having to fold it in half to get it through the letterbox.

I had to miss a bit of work because of it all but the postal workers' union was very kind and allocated me an extra four days' work. And I learned about the value of supportive workmates, they were great at the sorting office, asking me if I was OK. I really valued the camaraderie there.

Stephen Jones's Drifting and Dreaming collection will be showcased in the Royal Ascot daily fashion show on 14-18 June.

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