An army of temporary staff has been taken on to help deal with a huge increase in workload for the Royal Mail in Bristol this Christmas – which could peak at a staggering 3.5 million items of post in one day later this week.
That's around double the usual daily figure for the rest of the year, so 500 'casuals' have been drafted in to help sort the mail.
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Some are sent out to special delivery centres opened up at Severn Beach and around Bristol, but most are at the huge Mail Centre, just off the A38 in Filton.
Few of the hundreds of thousands of us in Bristol who will be posting Christmas cards and ordering things online this festive period will get a glimpse of the sheer scale of the operation there, which runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, right up to Christmas Eve.
"It doesn't stop at all, and then you get to Christmas Eve and that's when suddenly it stops and I can go home and have my Christmas," said Mark Lennon, the plant manager and the man in charge of the entire operation.
"It doesn't stop at all" - Mark Lennon, plant manager at Royal Mail Centre in Filton
"It starts with Black Friday now, which is the last weekend in November, and then it just continues at the same level," he added.
The internet has changed so much of our lives, and the humble postie is no exception. Email and texts mean the number of letters we send and receive – ask yourself when was the last time you wrote a letter? – has declined hugely over the past ten years and is still declining.
But while the Royal Mail isn't delivering our messages so much any more, it is delivering our stuff. The internet takes away with one hand but gives with another. A large section of the Mail Centre is full of high-sided trolleys which are themselves full with parcels: presents and every day goods that people have purchased from the comfort of their own settees.
But Christmas means another spike in demand for the postie – Christmas cards. The rows of pigeon hole sorting boxes are more than speckled with red envelopes – each one a Christmas card bringing festive greeting to someone in Bristol or the surrounding area.
Christmas means lots of red cards filling the sorting offices
"Christmas cards are still important for everyone, and especially us," said Mr Lennon. "People would still rather get a card than an email at Christmas, it's lovely."
"Letters are in decline, they're four-to-six per cent down, but Christmas cards are bucking the trend," he added.
Early shift manager David Hill started at 6am, and has around 300 staff beavering away accompanied by the constant whirring and humming of huge machines. They snake around the hangar-like building with thousands and thousands of letters spinning through them faster than the eye can see.
David Hill, early shift manager
"I've had 32 years with the Royal Mail and it has changed a lot," said Mr Hill. "Everything is dealt with by automation. But what I love the most about this is that the people working here really work together well, there's a great team spirit and everyone helps each other out."
The machines' speed relies on the fact most envelopes are printed now, and contain a postcode. But Christmas means a busier time for sorting out the ones that aren't – and many of them are Christmas cards.
Each letter, parcel or card is photographed and a computer reads the address. If the computer can't read the postcode, it is automatically taken out of the system and there something ingenious happens.
It is photographed, and the image appears on a screen somewhere, miles away, where one of a team of people try to work out what the postcode should be. When they've done it, they send that information back to the machine in Bristol, which marks it with the little orange bar code, and it is then sent back into the system.
The difference is huge. An item of mail costs the Royal Mail around 2p to process at this particular stage of the journey, using these vast machines. If it has to be done 'by hand', as it were, it would be 14p. It would also take thousands more workers, and be probably a lot slower.
The mail at the Mail Centre comes in and out like a tide. The morning sees the tide coming in as huge delivery trucks bring the letters and parcels for Bristol, Gloucester, Bath and Taunton from all over the rest of the country. The race is then on to sort those letters – and on an average day in the two weeks leading up to Christmas that can be in the millions – as quickly as possible, to get them back out to the delivery vans and lorries that take them as far away as Cheltenham and Tewkesbury, Westbury and Yeovil, Weston and Radstock, as well as Bristol itself.
And then, as one tide goes out for the 2pm dispatch, another begins – the mail that has been collected from letter boxes and post offices right across Bristol and the surrounding area. That needs sorting to go off by the end of the day, either within the Bristol area or to Mail Centres elsewhere in the country.
It's a huge operation, and one which we can all make that little bit smoother.
Here are the Royal Mail's top five tips for a swift delivery of those Christmas cards and parcels.
1) Always use a postcode and print it clearly.
2) Post your items as early as you can. The last posting date might be Tuesday, December 21 for second class, and Wednesday December 22 for first class, but it's not absolutely guaranteed. The earlier the better.
3) Pack your items securely. Parcels and letters whizz through machines at a tremendous rate now, and are no longer carried carefully by hand everywhere through the system.
4) Pay the right amount. Nothing worse than the postman telling you you've got to collect something, and then your excitement that it was because you have to pay money because the person sending your Christmas card put the wrong stamp on.
5) Put a return address on the back. Just in case.
ROYAL MAIL BRISTOL'S CHRISTMAS FACTFILE -
Christmas is the busiest time of the year for Royal Mail. We plan all year round to help ensure we deliver the best possible service to our customers
Royal Mail has been celebrating 500 years of the postal services throughout 2016 (Sir Brian Tuke was the first Master of the Posts, appointed by Henry VIII)
In 2015 we delivered 130 million parcels during the Christmas period, 6% more than the previous year.
During the peak Christmas period, Bristol Mail Centre could handle in the region of 3.5 million items in a single day, around double the average daily quantity.
We've taken on over 500 casual staff to help with Christmas rush.
Our Christmas stamps were issued on November 8. The six stamps celebrate some of the best-loved traditions of a UK Christmas - decorating the Christmas tree, making a snowman, hanging out a stocking, eating a Christmas pudding and lighting a Christmas lantern.
72 per cent of Brits would prefer to receive a traditional card this Christmas. Only six per cent would prefer a festive greeting via social media and 10 per cent via text, according to new research from Royal Mail.
The recently released Greeting Card Association (GCA) Market Report 2016 shows the value sales of single Christmas cards increased to £184 million in the UK with 105 million cards being sold singly.
In addition, the GCA estimates the value of cards sold in boxes and packs at £200 million, with around 900 million cards sold in the UK. This puts total UK Christmas card sales at a value of £384 million and with a volume of 1.05 billion cards bought.
