#postboxsaturday

Jen from Australia (@jenking.bsky.social) has been contributing to the common BlueSky site #postboxsaturday. I think it might have also been on Twitter, but Jen has changed platforms.

She's recently posted a photo of their "Postie" who collects the mail while riding a motorbike on their route.

I'm unable to post a picture of her own residential mailbox that is in the shape of a barn, which to me, inexplicably has U S Mail on the drop down door, because  Jen posted it as a video, with audio, that shows a fair size spider inside that looks like a small drone. We have snail mail, they have spider mail.

I of course commented and asked if it she bug sprayed it into oblivion. Turns out Jen knows her spiders, and responded that it was a common garden Huntsman spider that Jen just allowed to go free by leaving the mailbox door open. Catch and release for spiders.

But the real entertainment is the variety of shapes and sizes of the mailboxes in Australia and the UK for residents to deposit their mail in. The above pair of boxes at the top of this posting look like two Fisher-Price Peg People on steroids.

A UK Lyndhurst Hampshire resident contributed a photo of pair of boxes designated GR and EIIR. Google to the rescue. GR stands for:

" A GR UK mailbox is a red post box with the letters GR that was erected during the reign of King George V [1910- 1936]. The GR stand for the Latin name of King George, Georgius Rex, initials of King George V."

Leave it to the Brits to immortalize their Royalty with mailboxes. Makes you wonder what a Teddy Roosevelt mailbox would look like here in the States.

The EIIR stands for:

"An EIIR mailbox is a post box that features the royal cypher of Queen Elizabeth II, with is EIIR. The cypher is made up of the letters ER which stands for 'Elizabeth Regina' (Latin for "Queen"), and the Roman numerals II which represent the Queen's reign number."

Imagine if the U.S. Postal Service decided to commemorate the Super Bowl by designating mailboxes in the Roman numerical designation of the Super Bowl. Obviously, some cities would have more than one commemorative mailbox. It's just an idea.

Take a tour of the #postboxsaturday photos and you get a wide photo array of objects to deposit your mail in.

This one might be my favorite. It's a UK mailbox that to me affords a dog being walked a great circumference to sniff and raise its leg against and pee on. I wonder if you have to hold your nose when mailing your bills.

Here's another one that comes close to reminding me of what the mailbox a block from our house in Flushing looked like, and where I mailed my mom's letters.

The U.S. version of this mailbox is no longer found, but it was olive drab, mounted on a post. A neighbor's Christmas card to us in the '50s showed their son Billy standing next to it shoving the cards inside.

Which reminds me that what goes around comes around again. The mailbox of the' 50s could only accommodate a few envelopes at a time being inserted. You might have to keep feeding it because the drop down lid didn't create much of an opening. Somewhat like the coin return on pay phones of the era.

Eventually these mail boxes were replaced by those that could take even small packages. The drop down door allowed a wide maw to swallow mail. I think after 9/11 these were phased out and now only one envelope at a time can be inserted. I'm guessing this a deterrent to stuffing the mailbox with unwanted things, possible explosives.

There doesn't seem to be any end to what these Aussies and Brits can do with their mailboxes. I mean, would anyone here in the States take to knitting tops for their favorite mailbox?

I have to think someone has compiled photos and turned it into a coffee table book. I wonder. The inventiveness is charming.

It seems mailboxes can be mounted on just about anything. Some get imbedded into garden walls, others get a chimney look. The ones in walls look like fire alarm pull boxes that NYC once had on street corners that contributed to a rash of false alarms being set off by "playful" kids. The police and fire department now rely on cell or landline phone communication by the caller. A call from the street is sometimes complicated by the caller not knowing exactly the street location they are calling from. A hard wired box sent a more reliable location.

All in all, a piece of street furniture seems to have more character in Australia and the UK than it does here.

Maybe we're just dull.

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