Not long ago, the village post office I use almost every week closed and relocated.

Gone was the pleasant, airy shop that sold greeting cards, calendars and gifts. In its place was a dingy cubicle affair at the back of a dark, soulless newsagents.

Now another post office, which I also loved - sited in a pretty cottage in a nearby village - has closed and reopened in a mini-mart. And yet another - the closest to my home - has merged with the newsagent’s next door.

I am sure these new post offices will be efficient and friendly, and no doubt they will bring some advantages, like longer and later opening hours, but it is sad to see so many atmospheric little post offices, which have for decades been at the centre of village life, closing their doors forever.

We lived behind the post office in the North Yorkshire village where I grew up. Every morning from the crack of dawn it was a hive of activity, with vehicles and postal workers coming and going with packages and parcels.

Behind dark wooden counters Nancy the postmistress bustled about. Not unlike Matilda’s Miss Trunchbull in appearance, she was grumpy to say the least, especially when groups of children came in to raid the sweet counter.

Across the country, there have been countless campaigns to keep local post offices open and small communities are banding together to run them in places like pubs and local shops.

The heart of the community, our village post office wasn’t just a place where you bought stamps but where you bumped into other people and had a gossip. I learned all sorts of scandal as I waited to buy sweets and cash birthday postal orders.

The world is changing fast. My daughters can’t imagine it, but when I was a child my mum bought meat from Eric, the travelling butcher, whose van was not dissimilar to Jones’s in Dad’s Army. There was also a van selling groceries and a travelling fishmonger.

There were three village shops and our local ‘supermarket’, Walter Wilson, in the nearby town was a small shop with wooden shelves and staff who collected your purchases.

Now you can buy all your worldly goods in supermarkets the size of football pitches. You can have your eyes tested, have blood taken and even get married in them.

They are open 24 hours a day. Maybe I am looking through rose coloured glasses. I would be stuck if they reverted to the 9am to 5pm, half-day Wednesdays, shut on Sundays, schedule of my youth.

I may feel the same about village post offices in the future. But something special is being lost forever and that is sad.