We’ve got mail!
August 6th, 2007 - Posted in Kaimata Croft - by Sarah|
Up until a year ago I had always received my mail through a letterbox in my front door – even when living in a second floor flat (the postmen in Scotland are the fittest in the world!). In New Zealand things don’t work that way. Every house has a mail box at the end of the drive unless you live somewhere beyond the postman’s reach. Then you either have your box with a cluster of others on the side of the road at the end of his route or go and collect it from the post office.
Most people just have a boring oblong box with a peaked roof and increasingly these are made of moulded plastic. Occasionally though you do see some unusual ones like a fish made from old bicycles or a figure sculpted in concrete.
I decided, for reasons beyond even me, that our mailbox should resemble, as far as my crafty skills could manage, the hut belonging to Baba Yaga. Baba Yaga is a witch in Russian folk tales. She lives in a hut with a thatched roof that hops around the forest under it’s own volition on one large chicken foot. I haven’t quite managed the chicken foot yet but here is the fully operational mail box…
Our mailbox.
The mailbox has proved a big help to our introduction to our new neighbourhood as it enables the locals to identify us as the people with the strange letterbox. This means they can talk about us even when they don’t know our names! One thing I hadn’t foreseen though was the effect of New Zealanders’ unfamiliarity with thatched roofs – they all just think that it’s wearing a straw hat.
