Leafing through the Visitors’ Book in the church at Ashmansworth, I found a recent comment from Kate Theyer to the effect that ‘nothing had changed.’

I was glad to hear it, and equally glad to see Kate’s name. She no longer lives here, but for decades she ran the Ashmansworth Post Office.

The Theyer family featured heavily in the life of the village for at least 60 years. In the 1940s, Jack and Olive Theyer were working for Joy and Gerald Finzi at Church Farm, Olive as home help. But, as visitors there recalled, there was no upstairs/downstairs in the Finzi household; Olive joined in everything.

Jack was the practical handyman. He and Gerald planted the collection of rare apple trees which filled the orchard. It was somehow fitting that it was Jack who helped carry Gerald to the ambulance for his last journey to the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford, where he died.

Kate was their daughter-in-law. Of all places in the village to keep in touch, there was none better than Kate’s Post Office. No need for letters and stamps; the news flowed in and out by the most natural means: people stopping for a chat. We were there for everything: posting parcels, paying bills (you came away with a receipt to prove it), pensions, government forms for this and that and, above all, a living human being across the counter to explain it all.

It was the casual meetings at the Post Office that encouraged us to exchange news and views with our fellow villagers, which would otherwise have been left unsaid. 

Even a brief greeting seems to do us good. An American writer, Kurt Vonnegut, was asked why, each time he wrote a letter, he would walk down the street and buy a single envelope, when they were cheaper by the dozen? He said it was for the chance of meeting his fellow townsfolk, if only for a few words.

Kate was often on the WI committee. The WI, among their many virtues, would send get-well cards to villagers who were sick or in hospital, and even knitted boots for new-born babies. The Post Office was the place where, if you wished to, you mentioned these things.

That’s what comes of signing a Visitors’ Book, and adding an apt comment.