FOR a brief period in my childhood Wednesday became the worst day of the week.
It was the day my mother would be distressed to the point of tears as she tried to balance the books at her Sub-Post Office.
It was a fiendishly difficult feat in the days when almost everyone in the neighbourhood had business of some kind at the community hub.
In those days Post Offices were part of everyday life literally from the cradle to the grave, with child benefit and pensions and everything in between paid out in cash at the window.
The glass hatch was lifted for Christmas cards, presents and packages to be posted off around the corner and across the world.
The sheer scale of the cash transactions made it a target for armed robberies, until my mother casually mentioned to the mother of the area’s chief hood while paying over her benefits that “the Post Office will close us down if any more money gets stolen”.
Thankfully I wasn’t there for the robberies, which is probably why they feel less distressing than the memory of my meticulous, intelligent mother’s increasing desperation as she tried to trace a wayward dot among hundreds of receipts, like a knitter trying to rescue a dropped stitch.
Often it was all for the sake of a couple of pounds, sometimes just a few pennies.
But it was awful and it was stressful because, although it was her business, it was not her money, which amplified the pressure of having to account for every last penny.
Eventually she got the hang of it and then – wonder of wonders – came the computerised Horizon system.
There was of course trepidation. A few hours of `training’ and then all the fuss and minutiae handed over to an inanimate object.
But it worked perfectly and a small piece of the heavy load was lightened a little. It felt almost like a miracle.
As we now know, however, when it didn’t work – and it didn’t for hundreds of her associates – it was worse than a nightmare.
This week saw the opening of an independent inquiry into how Post Office operators were wrongfully accused of theft, fraud and false accounting as a result of computer errors.
Between 2000 and 2014, as many as 900 sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses were prosecuted and convicted based on information from the Horizon accounting system in one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British legal history.
The inquiry was told that when testimonies begin next year it will hear accounts of post office workers who died before their names could be cleared, who contemplated or attempted suicide and had their children bullied and spat on because of the wrongful accusations and convictions.
Despite their vindication, the ordeal is far from over. Sam Stein QC, acting for 151 of the operators warned the legal action has left them out of pocket and many facing “imminent financial ruin”.
Baffled sub-postmasters had sounded the alarm about bugs in the system after it reported shortfalls amounting to thousands of pounds.
Some tried to plug the gap with their own money, even re-mortgaging homes, in a futile attempt to correct the `error’.
Mr Stein told inquiry chair, retired high court judge Sir Wyn Williams of concerns Post Office and government “may use the lifetime of the inquiry to obfuscate… before they act”.
They fear compensation payouts will be delayed until the end of the inquiry.
“They should not be permitted to add to the extent of the Post Office scandal by doing nothing, delaying payment, prolonging suffering and avoiding responsibility,” he warned.
Despite judgments in the court of appeal quashing scores of convictions, victims had still not received adequate compensation.
So much of their lives have already been stolen by worry, shame and incarceration.
When I think about my poor mother’s panic and desolation over far smaller sums, the idea they face any more years of anguish is just inconceivable.
