A chara, - The recently issued edition of stamps commemorating 150 years of post-boxes in use in Ireland provides us with four beautiful stamps. I find it bizarre, however, that An Post should issue such a nostalgic set while simultaneously ripping out some of the old pillar-boxes which dot our streets. In recent months pillarboxes have vanished from streets in Dublin and in Galway and possibly elsewhere, to be replaced with banal, iced-lolly look-alikes. The modern box is a poor substitute for the old pillars, whether the plain cylindrical pillar, the double box, or the quaint hexagonal and square boxes depicted on the new stamps.
I am reminded of the Monty Python question: "What did the Romans ever do for us?" One might ask the same of the British system in Ireland and come up with the legacy of post boxes. Such boxes are a useful reminder of a darker period in our country's history, bearing the crown - VR, ER, or GR - or the curious hybrid of a Crown above and a Saorstat Eireann door below. They are street features we should protect as reminders of our past - not ditch in favour of designer boxes - Yours, etc., Eoghan Mac Cormaic,
Sraid an Aird Bhig, Baile Atha Cliath.
