Free 21st Century Dodos: A Collection of Endangered Objects (and Other Stuff) by Steve Stack

Boxes
    Boxing Day gets its name from the small earthenware boxes that the poor would use in medieval times to save for Christmas treats. They would smash these open and spend the contents on something special in the festive season.
    This idea changed somewhat over the years, and became the name for gifts given to tradesmen on or around Christmas time. Households would put aside a few coins or a bottle of booze for the milkman, postman, and other regular callers, and hand them out during Christmas week.
    The practice has pretty much died out in recent years. When I handed a bottle of wine to my postman a couple of years ago, he said it was the only gift he had received that year.
    So why have we stopped rewarding those who deliver to our doorsteps, come rain or shine? Are we less generous than our parents and grandparents? Are times tougher? Are people less deserving?
    I think the answer is quite different. We get fewer door-to-door callers, and those that do come are not always the same people. Think about it, how many of us still have a milkman delivering to our door? And when it comes to postmen and women, we used to have the same person delivering at about the same time every day. If we wanted to give the postman his Christmas box, we knew we could catch him at 7.15 on Christmas Eve morning (or whatever time he usually delivered). Mum would lie in wait with a pound note or a bottle of plonk, and hand it over with words of Christmas cheer and best wishes for the year ahead. Nowadays my mail can-arrive any time from 7.00 in the morning till 4.00 in the afternoon, and I rarely have the same postman twice.
    We no longer have friendly relationships with the people who deliver to our door – milkmen used to be notorious for knockingup bored housewives, but I bet that doesn’t happen all that much any more, either – and, as a result, we don’t feel the need to offer them a gift at Christmas. I think this is a shame, and is a tradition that I would love to see restored.
    As would my postman.
     
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Petrol Pump Attendants
    You’d pull up at the petrol station in your Rover 3500, Ford Capri, or perhaps Austin Allegro [insert your own nostalgia-inducing make and model here], and onto the forecourt would waddle a chap in overalls.
    ‘Fill her up,’ you would cry cheerfully from behind the wheel. And fill her up he would, as well as checking the oil, water, and tyres, while he was at it.
    You may find it hard to believe, but this was how everyone got their petrol until the onset of self-service stations in the 1970s. You didn’t even have to get out of the car to pay. The attendant would take your money, pop back to his kiosk, and return with a fistful of change.
    That, my friends, was proper customer service.
    The idea of the petrol pump attendant actually harks back to a time before the garage forecourt, when fuel would be delivered to the homes of the privileged few who could afford to own a motor vehicle. It seemed natural for that personal service to extend to all customers when cars became more affordable and widely available.
    One of the last attendants in the country, Dudley Oliver of Bentley’s Garage in Exmouth, finally hung up his nozzle in 2010, not for lack of business, but rather because the ancient pumps were beginning to fall foul of health and safety laws, and would prove too costly to replace. The garage continues to trade for repairs and, in a nice touch, for free oil, water, and tyre checks, with Mr Oliver, kept on the payroll to valet cars.
    So it isn’t all bad news, although for one elderly lady customer it did truly mark the end: ‘I’ve never had to put petrol in my car myself and I’m not going to start now.’
     
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Green Shield Stamps
    Before the days of loyalty cards and Nectar points, we had Green Shield Stamps. These were small, about the size of a postage stamp, and dispensed from machines at the tills of many supermarkets, petrol stations, and corner shops.