The Jolly Postman, or, Other People’s Letters 1986

Soon the Jolly Postman

We hear tell,

Stopped at a door with a giant bell

and a giant

Bottle of milk as well

With a postcard for … guess who?

Janet Ahlberg’s lines flesh out the verse with economy of line but plenty of gesture. Mr V. Bigg is stuck at home, wearing his tweedy vest, not pleased to be hearing from an old adversary. A gigantic grandad is squinting at the absurd holiday snaps on the card with only his earring hinting at his colourful past. Baby is doing what babies do – reaching for a block, or a chip-off-the-old and about to bite the postman in half? And yet he has a sippy cup and half-eaten biscuit that any young reader can relate to.

Allan Ahlberg’s lyricism with simple verse made them the perfect picture book creators of this era. The rhythm of the book takes the successful formula of Peepo! (1981) and builds on it. The cast of Each Peach Pear Plum (1978) are reprised on the cover. The alliteration of the last two lines on this page are an example of his playfulness with words. Much has been written, and by better writers than me, about Janet Ahlberg’s genius: Allan’s touching Janet’s Last Book (1997) tells the story of their twenty year partnership.

I’ve always been envious of the English post – a pile of letters by your breakfast plate, to be savoured with toast and tea, having been courteously delivered through your front door.  An anonymous bike rider shoving letters into a cold little box at the suburban front gate by mid-afternoon if I was lucky was yet another example of the difference between fiction and real life.

Letter writing, and receiving replies from loved ones, has kept me holding onto the idea of myself through many external changes to my world.  We came to Australia from New Zealand when I was 9, and by 1986, I had moved seven or eight times. One of my favourite correspondents was my Aunty May who kept me informed of cousins and their adventures in a landscape I barely remembered.  She took a great interest in my career as she had trained as a Froebel educator, and generously shared her expertise and book ideas gleaned from her work as a teacher of young adults with disabilities.  It was a great day to open my rented post box and see an airmail envelope from her.

Invited onto a very active Children’s Services working group, I learned a lot about families in Ballarat district through contact with playgroups, maternal and child health, as well as the toy library. As a city of 80,000 people, Ballarat boasted its own television station: BTV6. Their local programming included a morning talk show, and a Saturday morning full of children’s cartoons, and I was asked to appear as a guest on both during school holidays and Children’s Book Week.

I wasn’t quite the sensation I claimed in my last blog post – I learned the hard way that their budget did not extend to makeup artists on the weekends. Nevertheless, I was very touched to receive a handwritten letter later that year from a woman on a remote Western Victorian property, saying she had ordered a book I recommended, and always found what I had to say so interesting.

A blog doesn’t have the impact of a barber-striped envelope with the postmark EAST OF SUN WEST OF MOON that the postman brings to the Giant’s door.  But I have needed very little encouragement since this, the tenth year of 40,  to broadcast.