Letterbox awards for Campaign '05

Driving home in the car today I planned to make a post about letterboxes, only to find Span already musing on the same subject.

Election time for most politicos usually involves strolling around the local streets delivering leaflets of information in the hope of better informing voters.

Today I strolled down memory lane, delivering Alliance tabloids to the very first street I lived, Haslet Place in Riccarton. I snuck a peek down the driveway to see the old house, the red-brick box I had not lived in since 1983 or thereabouts. As I folded each tabloid and placed it in each letterbox in Haslet Place, I came across a lovely childhood memory I had long forgotten.

The Lighthouse Letterbox. As a tot I remember enjoying walking past the letterbox shaped like a model lighthouse, with little windows and a tiny railing around the top. I liked the novelty of the letters going in vertically through a narrow slot and the decorative rocks attached to the base of the lighthouse. Sadly, like many real lighthouses, the passing of twenty years has left the lighthouse letterbox in a rather tatty state of repair. Once it looked so proud and novel.

But my vote for the best letterbox I saw this election campaign goes to some ingenious folks in Hokitika. What was perched out at the gate, where a letterbox should be?

An Old Microwave, with a the number of the house painted in white on the dark microwave door. Delivering a leaflet involved opening the door, which as I thought later was a great way to protect the mail from the elements - no more soggy envelopes!

Any other nominations for best letterbox of Election '05?