The village Post Office is closed. It all happened last week. Juniper Green Post Office was open one day and the next there was a sign on the counter telling us that it was closed and we should go to Currie! Will the shop be next? Apparently it will close in 4 weeks time. There are plans afoot for the site. Where will I go for my morning paper when the shop closes? Will someone other bright entrepreneur begin to sell newspapers?
For me, this is not so much of a problem. I can climb into my car and go to Currie Post Office or Colinton or Wester Hailes. I can walk to Currie or Colinton for my paper (I might be exhausted at the end, but some might argue it would do me good!) but there are people in Juniper Green and Baberton who depend on the community having a Post Office and a shop nearby. They don't have a car; they can't get on the bus; they can make it to Juniper Green but they could not get to the more distant places!
I read somewhere that there are 2,500 Post Offices earmarked for closure (I assume that that is a UK-wide figure) and that in the last year some 1,400 pubs have also closed, largely due to the smoking ban. Many of these post offices and pubs would be in small communities, places where it is hard to make these enterprises succeed. What impact do these closures have om community life? There is something true about not knowing what you've got till its gone! Take away the Post Office and the pub as community meeting places and something is lost from the heart of the community. How many people are out and about in Juniper Green simply because they visit the Post Office and the shop (and the pub)? There are people whose only conversation is with someone they meet on the way to the shop for their paper; for people like that the danger is that they become more and more isolated at home.
What does Church do about this? We could complain about the loss of the Post Office but from what I understand that would be fruitless. There is another challenge here for Church - how do we make sure that Church is a meeting place for people in the community? The article I read about Post Offices and Pubs then lambasted the Church of Scotland for taking churches away from small rural communities too. How can we make sure Church is at the heart of community life? How can we persuade people that Church is at the heart of the life of our community? In some very obvious ways, Church can never replace the Post Office or the shop, or the pub, but how can we serve the community best? How can we be and remain a meeting place, a place at the heart of our community?
