Joan Collins is history - is your post office next?

History takes time to appreciate. And the longer the Save Our Post Offices campaign drives forwards then the heavier the loss of our branch network weighs on the shoulders of time.

We are now into our sixth year of fighting for post office survival and on the cusp of one of the most damaging closure periods of all. Over the next 18 months there will be a culling of 2,500 branches from the 14,300-strong network. When our campaign began there were more than 18,000 post offices in Britain.

Make no mistake, once gone these branches never come back. We'll have all the time in the world to get all dewy-eyed and nostalgic but right now we live in the current world and still have a fight against a gross injustice that targets the most vulnerable.

The Post Office has its own methods of shifting the focus - spending millions on already historic artefacts with a series of TV ads, featuring an ant-infested floor (ha, bloody ha) and Joan Collins. Personally, I think the money could be better spent on propping up a cash-starved network rather than ad men in shiny-suits who know how to massage the purse strings - so no doubt egos - of Post Office bosses.

My most recent trip to the flatlands of North Lincolnshire was no misguided marketing gimmick. Hopeless at directions while I followed the single-lane tractors I plugged in the postcode of one of the dozens of rural branches earmarked for the chop into my trusty Sat Nav.

When I turned up at the tiny village of Markby it was a surprise to be guided to a nearby field.

It took several trips up and down the lane before I discovered a small 'post office' sign hanging from bailer twine from a fence. I knocked on the nearest house door to ask if there was a post office nearby. A friendly woman directed me down the side of the house behind a caravan to an unmarked door. By the time I was in, so was the same woman, Kathleen Windsor.

She accepts closure but not the flagrant disrespect to history. She opens a small wooden case and shows me a stamp set the post office has been using for the past 120 years. Can I have a closer look? A polite but firm no. It has never been taken from behind the counter in the entire history of the post office and she is certainly not going to start now.

Her respect for a time-honoured tradition is laudable. Yet history counts for absolutely nothing with the Post Office - the very same noble past that earned it the loyal following now so systematically being destroying. And it takes far more than slick adverts to rebuild trust.

Toby Walne, Travels With Toby, Financial Mail on Sunday

toby@walne.co.uk