Creaton Post Office & Stores, Northamptonshire

As we all know, the efforts of village shopkeepers all too often seem to go unnoticed. It restores a little faith in human nature, therefore, when someone is prepared to take the trouble to put pen to paper in order to show his or her appreciation, as in the case of the following recent letter to Royal Mail.

"I will be emigrating to Australia in 7 days, and just wanted to express my appreciation of a couple of people working within the Royal Mail service who I believe give outstanding service. They are David & Sylvia Winter, who run Creaton Post Office in Northamptonshire. We usually only ever get to hear words of criticism, so it's an absolute pleasure for me to write this letter to you before I depart.

“When they took over the PO it was nothing short of a pigsty. It was dirty, unfriendly and run down into a state of disrepair. I had collected my magazines and used the PO on a regular basis in an attempt to help support it as part of the local community, and I was very shocked when the last owner simply stopped my magazines & papers with no explanation. Those original owners were quite indifferent to the needs of the village and, as a result, the shop and PO had become an uncomfortable place to walk into.

“Since David & Sylvia have taken over, the shop has positively bloomed and become the centre of the village again. Whenever you walk in it's filled with no end of stock, with a friendly face to greet you every time. Nothing is too much trouble for Sylvia. The effort she makes to make the shop & PO a welcoming place deserves a mention, especially her efforts to create a dazzling shop window. She will also always assist in any local fund-raising for the many needy charities. She is quite simply a lovely, customer-focused sub-postmistress who makes her best effort every time.