Bryony blogs

It’s a new year and RMtv has a new look and a new presenter in town. Meet Bryony Billson, the first face you will see on RMtv Now this week, as we begin a new year of programmes.

Join Bryony who chats to chief customer officer Nick Landon and eBay’s Mike Pitt in the studio. And you’ll also get to see her out and about on Delivery. As she reveals in her first blog post below… this proved a real labour of love…

The Jolly Postman or Other People’s Letters was (and still is) my favourite book of all time.

Twenty-five years on and this childhood classic hasn’t aged one bit and is to blame for my total love of posties, letters and yes, I’ll admit it… stamps.

In case you haven’t had the joy of reading this book yet the premise is the Jolly Postman goes from home to home in a fairytale kingdom, delivering letters to such familiar addresses as "Mr. and Mrs. Bear, Three Bears Cottage, The Woods.'' Every other page is an actual envelope, with a letter or postcard tucked inside (genius!).

The letter to the three bears, for example, is from Goldilocks, who apologises for the trouble she's caused and invites Baby Bear to her birthday party.

It rhymes, the illustrations are beautiful and there’s so much detail that you can read it again and again and still spot something different every time.

Combined with watching the best animation of the 1980s, Postman Pat, since the age of five, I have believed that all postmen and women are kind, jolly, friendly people who love their job and to be fair, so far that has also been my experience to date at Royal Mail.

Growing up on a farm, the postman coming was quite exciting! Seeing the red van come up the farm track I’d run out of the house to collect the mail because it was my job to sort the post for the different people that lived and worked on the farm. With two brothers that were five years older than me, ‘little Bryony’ had to take the jobs she could (or was allowed) and sorting post was one of them.

At the age of five my reading skills and understanding of names and addresses was, well, like a five-year-old! So, I would proudly sort the pile of envelopes at the kitchen table – sometimes I would sort them by size, sometimes I would colour match the stamps and sometimes I would just order from which looked most fun to most boring.

My mum would praise me profusely for doing such a good job and I would sit there beaming that, yet again, I had contributed to the morning’s work on the farm.

Fast forward 27 years and when I get home I still sort my post from most fun to most boring (rarely making it to opening the most boring post, or ‘bills’ as I believe they are called) and my love of the postman or woman is still as strong.

Remember to look out for me on RMtv Now this week. And I’ll be back with more blogs soon.