IF it was not for the distinct personality of its postmistress, Wolverley shop and post office could be in Postman Pat's Greendale.

Apart from no longer selling the groceries it did when Sue Watkins family took over 44 years ago, it has barely changed and remains the most traditional of English village shops.

Miss Watkins and her brother, Richard, have run it since their mother, Iris, retired at 79 after being postmistress for 33 years. She also delivers the papers on her moped every morning.

Customers are greeted by name and tit-bits of news exchanged when they pop in for a paper, a battery, a packet of envelopes or box of matches.

In school term Miss Watkins is busy after 3pm serving up to 40 Wolverley High School children with bags of vividly coloured sweets from large glass candy jars, packets of crisps and cans of pop.

When she was young, she earned just £6 a week as a live-in stable girl working from dawn to dusk in a Cookley riding centre earning a qualification to teach equitation.

Her bed was next to a bucket catching drips from the ceiling and she wore a duffle coat to breakfast because it was so cold.

But she never swayed from her ambition. She became an instructor at Cookley and a chief at Lea Castle riding centre.

Her lifelong passion is horses. The people who come in to chat in the post office are as likely to be horsey friends - "you can talk about horses forever"- as the old lady on the perennial topics of rheumatism and the weather.

A woman of apparently boundless energy, she daily looks after six ponies of her own, horses in two private stables and her livery stable. It keeps her working until nightfall.

Miss Watkins, a former pupil of Sladen Secondary Modern who began her working life as a nanny for the Binnian family, is best known now for her outstanding success in horse driving.

She took it up about 19 years ago only two years after the thriving Wolverley and District Driving Club was founded. She has been an active member helping to organise its 12 to 14 rallies, shows and other events a year and she was chairman for three years.

Her pride and joy is an English spot pony, Henry Spots, whom she broke in to harness herself and who has won her many trophies at the three counties shows. Her "finest hour" was in 1996 when he won gelding, cob and supreme gelding championships all in one go at the national breed show.

The other pride in her life is the career of Tim Randle of Wolverley who now competes at Badminton and Burley. She gave him his first ride on a small pony at the age of 11.