Royal Mail bosses have suggested to postmen that they should not accept a Christmas tip if it’s £30 or more. This is because under the terms of the new Bribery Act that sort of money could conceivably constitute a bribe. I’ve never been a postman, sadly, let alone a postman at Christmas. I don’t know how much a postman expects to make from Christmas tips. But I was seven years a dustman and for us Christmas was always a cash bonanza of mind-boggling proportions. I have lots of happy memories of stepping down from the dustcart on Christmas Eve, already tight as a tick, and heading straight for the pub, my trouser pockets bulging with wedges of cash several inches thick.
It wasn’t just cash we were given. Every evening in the fortnight leading up to Christmas I’d be going home with bottles of wine, half-bottles of vodka, boxes of chocolates, cakes, biscuits, sweets, assorted knitwear, socks, pocket diaries, scenic calendars and, after a day collecting rubbish from the remoter districts, string bags of turnips. It was crazy. For 11 months of the year I was skint, and for the one remaining month I lived like a lottery winner.
We were two loaders and a driver on our lorry. Every Christmas tip we were given, or found Sellotaped to a bin or black bag, we passed up to the driver. He put the money in a biscuit tin on the dashboard, next to his false teeth. Other gifts and consumables he stowed behind his seat. We divvied everything up three ways at the end of each week.
During the first week in December the Christmas tips trickled in; in the second week, the trickle became a steady stream; and by the third week envelopes containing cash were coming at us from all directions at once and we hardly drew a sober breath.
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