I GOT a letter today. So what? you may say, or, was it a bill? But those four words “I got a letter” sum up a remarkable nationwide phenomenon that has been working for more than a century – the postman.

What other organisation guarantees to walk or drive past every single address in the UK every single working day? The milkman, the paper boy, the supermarket van don’t – they only go to their customers. When did you last see a bobby on the beat on your street, unless you live in an area of antisocial nuisances? But the postman, he walked down your street yesterday and today and will do so tomorrow, just as he walks down my street every working day, come rain or shine or ungritted pavements. You never hear of leaves on the road or the wrong kind of snow stopping the postman.

We take the postman, like the letter through the letterbox, for granted. But is he now an endangered species, threatened with extinction by email and courier services? Is he needed in the age of text message and twitter? Can an email replace the anticipation of hearing a letter landing on your doormat?

At first glance, assigning men and women to walk every single street of the country every day to make sure that no matter where a letter is going, there will be a postman going in its direction, is not the most economical way of handling post. Surely it would be far more sensible to hold back delivery in each area until there is a reasonable amount of post. That way resources could be concentrated where and when they are most needed.

But some rural areas would be lucky to see a postman once a month and even some urban areas could be down to a delivery a week, depending on what is a “reasonable amount”. What happens then when you are waiting for an urgent letter? And how do you persuade a company not to send in the bailiff when you don’t pay your bill on time because it doesn’t arrive until a week after it was due?

The post should and must be delivered speedily. How to achieve that in a time when efficiency and value for money are the most important words? Value and efficiency, as the Royal Mail will tell you, are achieved by the postman delivering as many letters as possible while covering as long a round as possible as quickly as possible, and its accountants and managers will reel off a mass of figures to support their claim.

All of which is undoubtedly true, but entirely misses the point. The postman is an essential part of our community, not just an employee for a delivery firm. He’s always there, come what may. He knows the Robinsons live at No 18, so that’s where he delivers their post, including that addressed to them at No 81.

He is the man who knows exactly where every street is in every new housing development. He is the unseen hand that puts a parcel in a pre-arranged safe place in an outhouse because farmers cannot afford to waste good weather hanging around at home or driving 15 miles to the nearest sorting office.

His cheery smile may be the only one old Mrs Brown, who lives alone, sees that day. And when she isn’t at her window, he knows something is wrong and passes on the word. None of the last paragraph is in his job description and he cannot achieve it if he only thinks of racing round his round to meet managerial targets. But it is what makes him or her a postman/postwoman and it is why he or she must survive, somehow, in our electronic age.