I've just got back from spending some time in the UK. One thing I noticed in a couple of towns there is that the central post office has been rehoused at the back of W. H. Smith's (a UK news vendor plus stationer's plus CD and bookshop). Why is this? Given that lots of sub-post offices were earmarked for closure a while back, the central post office is the sole source of supply now for everything but stamps, with the result that I queued for forty minutes in Folkestone (Kent) on Saturday, with the line of people stretching back through the shop proper and winding between shelves of books etc. This meant that the ordinary W.H. Smith clientele got caught up with those waiting to send parcels or cash giros in the post office section. It seems to make no sense to collocate the two, especially when you consider that, in Folkestone and Carlisle at least, the buildings that used to house the central post offices now stand empty. French post offices continue to function as stand-alone units, so why did the UK decide to combine theirs with branches of W. H. Smith's?

You've hit a controversy, Colin "Save our post office" .

Post Office Limited have plans to close many sub-post offices.That means that a number of villages will lose theirs. The Post Office approach is to open post offices in shops.In Cambridge we have them in supermarkets, not just in newsagents like W H Smith.In villages they have long been part of a village shop. I can't remember a time when our post office was just a post office. There was a village general shop as well but the post office always sold a range of stuff, mostly seeds and hardware suited to a village.Now the general shop is long gone and the post office is the general shop,like a small supermarket.It's also the newsagent, takes dry cleaning and is where you collect prescriptions from the doctors.

A sub-post office is a private business, operated under licence.The 'main post offices' remain in big towns and cities.

At this time of year, you get quite big queues.The main post office in Cambridge always has a queue.It's mainly because foreign students and tourists don't appreciate that there are other sub- post offices, often in shops, and are accustomed to going to 'the' post office in their home country

France? Our post office is run entirely as a state enterprise. Antibes has two post offices in the centre of town, within a kilometre of one another.Failing those you have to drive to the outskirts e.g. there's one on the road heading to the autoroute, but I can't think of any others.There's always a queue in all of them, at all times of day (except lunch, when they tend to be shut, and in the morning when they are not yet open.I think they still open at 10 )

Thanks for that Fred. In my village in France, there’s a post office that’s open two mornings a week and three afternoons. It’s referred to as an “agence postale” and all it deals with is post office business, not selling anything else. Other villages near ours have their own post office, again not dealing with anything but post office matters. Paris has lots of dedicated post offices, but in the UK this business of collocating them inside shops just does not make any sense. I can understand the rationale of closing the sub-post-offices (whether or not I agree with it isn’t relevant here) but surely it’s not just in December (or in Cambridge ) that the post offices are crowded? My mother tells me that the busy post office in Carlisle is on the first floor of her W. H. Smith as well, and that there isn’t a lift. A bad idea for pensioners who go in for their weekly payment, surely, for not every pensioner has a bank account, even today.

It makes sense to the Post Office.They haven't got any capital tied up in a dedicated building used for little or nothing else.The big shop chains have branches in every high street.For them a post office can be a profitable adjunct to the main business.It can be at the back of the shop, occupies little space, the space is already 'paid for' and customers who go in to post a parcel or collect benefits may buy newspapers and other goods while they are there. As a stand alone business, a post office occupies valuable land, in or near a town centre, and exists only for a very narrow market.

So, sic transit gloriae mundi all over again, is it? Alas and alack. Which brings me to another point I'd like to raise about wine, only I'lm not sure where to post it. Why doesn't DG introduce a new section entitled "Queries about other countries following my return to the one in which I live"?

Colin, do stop being so intriguing ! What could someone living in France have to ask about wine in Britain ? Unless, that is, it's why the top grades of French wine in France seem dearer there than in Britain