SEE the elderly ladies and gentlemen now struggling up and down two flights of stairs, or crowding into the one lift, to negotiate the sales floor of WH Smiths to reach their new but unrequested main town post office.

See the newly recruited staff learning on the job because none of the familiar faces from the former post office appear to have chosen to join the new operation.

See the now abandoned and boarded-up Crown Post Office on Stamford New Road, and the poignant war memorial to those post office servants who gave their lives for a better world.

See the travellers standing on the platform of the railway station and still without toilet facilities. After how many years?

See the new but empty retail outlets adjoining Goose Green and down the ramp, under the tenements, in Lloyd Street, and wonder why no one seems very keen to open a shop in either place. See the monstrous edifice of the round-the-clock supermarket where no one ever sleeps.

See the long-awaited new Altrincham cinema which appears to consist of two large and garish new restaurants with a cinema jammed in the space between.

See the ever deteriorating state of the town's roads and see your ever mounting demand for council tax which goes in large part to fund the index-linked, final salary pensions of public service workers who are not subject to the financial pressures faced by workers in the real world.

See all this and maybe shed a tear for the Altrincham we used to know.

Peter Harrison, Lansdowne Road, Altrincham