IN DAYS of yore, the post office was the hub of the community. The position of postmaster or mistress was revered. They felt it was a privilege to be tied up and robbed.

Nowadays, however, the post office cuts a somewhat sorry and bedraggled figure. It had great prospects but somehow let it all slip through its fingers. It's the Gazza of the high street.

Often it's tucked away at the back of a convenience store. It's not unusual to spend 15 minutes queuing for your car tax alongside a display of feminine hygiene products.

The post office does not fit easily into the convenience store environment. It's an essentially staid and conservative institution and positioning it amid aisles of Pot Noodles and Nuts magazines is akin to asking Vera Lynn to go holidaying with Club 18-30.

It's somehow unfitting, as I have done on several occasions, to find yourself licking the back of the Queen's head while resting an envelope on a crate of Pringles.

In Bentilee, many concerned residents are fighting a proposal to sell alcohol at Beverley Drive Post Office and Community Store. They argue that there are plenty enough booze outlets in the area and yet another can only add to problems of anti-social behaviour.

I am inclined to agree. The sight of youths hanging around outside convenience stores is an unedifying one. For quite some time now I've been arguing that police community support officers should be empowered to shoo them away with a broom. One wonders why these young men and women can't find a proper hobby, like boy-scouting or needlework.

If they're not hanging around outside convenience stores they're lolling around semi-inebriated at children's playgrounds. I've lost count of the amount of times I've had to lead my children away because a vast teenager is carving 'Wayne woz ere' on the swings. And surely it's illegal for anyone to be drunk in charge of a roundabout.

Like the good people of Bentilee, it seems to me that there are indeed more than enough places selling alcohol without the post office adding to the number. I mean, how many of us ever truly hanker after two first class stamps and a six-pack of Special Brew?

It seems virtually every shop you go in these days sells drink. I remember a few months ago – even the pet shop was offering a Christmas tipple for your parrot.

And a post office is used by many elderly folk, for goodness sake. They don't wish to be bombarded with alco-pops and cheap cider while collecting their pension. Most of them prefer a dry sherry.

One shouldn't also forget that many elderly people feel vulnerable when out and about and have no wish to share the post office with people with serious drink habits, like schoolchildren, and MPs.

It can be unnerving for the octogenarian community to have to queue up for a new licence for their poodle behind a tattooed housewife engulfed in the fumes of a well-known Bavarian lager.

A petition is doing the rounds about the alcohol proposal at the post office in Beverley Drive.

It already includes in excess of 100 names, although organisers might do well to check that no joker has signed it 'Stella Artois, Bentilee'.

One would hope that post offices can eventually be returned to the way they were 20 years ago – soulless, empty places where the only goods on offer were a small choice of bereavement cards and a green biro.

We didn't need booze then. We were drunk on the atmosphere.