old post

the name is older than the station. there was a coaching post here in the time before the rails, and the building still stands — now half-station, half-post-office, with letters and parcels sorted in a back room that smells of glue and tobacco.

the village is two miles off and uses the station mostly for the post. the trains stop because of an old courtesy nobody has revisited; three a day each way, the morning train carries the mail and waits a minute longer than the timetable suggests. the stationmaster is also the postmistress; she counts letters into sacks while waiting for the engine to whistle.

field note: a walker came through in the rain last april with a parcel of pressed ferns. she sent them to herself, at her own address, in another country. the postmistress did not ask why.