The Richard Spooner Column: Easy, like Sunday morning�

Communications, as everyone knows, have changed beyond recognition. It was brought home to me this week when a lady appearing on TV quiz which asks, rather needlessly I would suggest, if you want to be a millionaire.

In answer to a question, she said she didn 't know on which day of the week The Observer newspaper was published.

Now I don 't expect everyone to have a forensic knowledge of newspapers but this lady went on to say that she had never heard of it and underlined her assertion by adding she never read newspapers. I shouldn 't be surprised at that but forgive me for feeling terribly sad.

I won 't bore you again with the important role newspapers have played in my life and possibly visa versa. But I must be missing something compared with those people who prefer - or have been brow-beaten into preferring - reading a newspaper on-line. Do let me know what it is.

Brands vary, but first you need to have with you a charged device in order to do so, go through many loops until you can get to what you want to read and when you arrive there, be interrupted by advertisements you don 't want to read and surveys you don 't want to take. You may even have to pay for the privilege too.

Anyway, I know this is the present and the future and good luck to it. But give me a crumply old newspaper, a comfy seat, a coffee and the sports pages on a Sunday morning any time.

This brings me to another, fast-changing communication hub - the Post Office. They were once the centre of life alongside the pub in almost every location in the country.

Marvellous places which were a lifeline to many, mainly elderly, people who would often pop in for a chat and buy an unwanted stamp just to enjoy company. In that way staff could monitor anyone who hadn 't been in for a few days and check on their welfare.

A sort of laissez-faire social welfare service. This was also performed by local butchers and bakers - a subliminal check on the pulse of the local community.

Post Offices through Royal Mail also delivered letters pretty efficiently, no more so than in Victorian times.

I can remember one morning deciding on a whim to invite a lady friend who lived on the other side of London to tea in my Highgate lodgings.

I posted the invitation in the early morning, received a positive reply by noon and we enjoyed tea, freshly-baked crumpets and a long discourse at 3 in the afternoon. All thanks to the efficiency and punctuality of the postman.

Instant communications, Victorian-style, did exist giving another reason to regret the denouement of the Post Office and Royal Mail.

BTW, the answer to my quiz is: Sunday. The Observer is the sister publication to the Guardian in fact and spirit�