I queue here most days. I know them all. There’s the Rod Stewart look alike, the old groover, with his bleached hair, leather jacket and smart denims, and deep wrinkles and fag-crackled voice, getting his cash. The single mums ask for ever smaller amounts off the plastic, card after card, until at last one comes up undeclined. Today a man paid his final gas bill. It might be the final gas bill ever paid here. And what about the man who sells pram covers and things who often processes twenty parcels at a shot? And me with my books? The books I write and send out in hope, the books I proof read and send back to discerning publishers in certainty, and the signed copies I send to fans in gratitude? Where will they go from now?

And all those other small businesses?

Man, this is a regeneration area. New flats. Promises of small shops and restaurants and bars and cafés. What will they all do without a Post Office?

A foreign couple stand in front of me and struggle with the language and struggle with their parcel home and some important papers and the people here deal with them kindly.

There’s never anything ordinary in the queue and there are always overflowing sacks of mail.

I wrote and I told you. “You tell us this, after the students have gone home? You must canvas the students.”

I tell my colleagues.

“It’s the only place we can get to in our non-existent lunch hours,” they say.

You send a letter to the university. But you’re planning to close this place down before the students come back. You told us after they went home.

I’m not the only writer here. Three university buildings full of submitting writers, all two hundred yards away. The alternatives you offer area are a bus ride away, and already slow in serving.

Print my own postage? Yes, I’ve done that before. It takes forever because of your clumsy programming. You charge me the same and expect me to pay for the ink and the paper? And then I have to drive anyway to a post office because your mouths are too small.

You expect me now to pay my cheques into the branch in town? Bus ride. Car ride. Parking. Shankses. Time-consuming.

You expect me to take my cash out of the nearest ATM? Risky. You never know who’s lurking behind you.

And what about the single mums and those on benefits?

Have you heard of global warming? Threatened congestion charge?

Only one other person in front of me in the queue now. He’s doing something complicated with his car tax. Thank goodness the people who work here are patient and understanding.

“Can I pay for this here?” I ask. I’ve selected a blank card with a picture of a bottle of champagne and a couple of glasses on it. My daughter and future son-in-law were engaged on Monday.

“Of course you can, luv,” he says all Lancashire and at odds with his turbaned head and beautiful pale black skin, but lovely all the same. I’ll miss him when the Post Office’s gone.