By Clare Gabriel BBC Wales News website

Michael Smith is sad at the thought of closing for the last time

The post office he and wife Kay have run for forty years on an estate in south Wales is earmarked for closure.

A stream of customers queuing for pensions, family credits and stamps as the plans were unveiled on Thursday were unhappy at the news.

But the branch at Llandough in the Vale of Glamorgan is one of 13 destined to go at the end of a consultation period.

It is the only shop not boarded up in the small parade on the grey suburban road.

"When we moved here in the 1960s we were the first," remembered Mr Smith.

Soon you'll have a barcode tattooed across your forehead and you won't have to say anything... ever Michael Smith

"It was a traditional parade. You had a grocer, a butcher, a fruit and veg shop and a wool shop. We were the post office and newsagents.

"There was no supermarket in Cardiff then - the most you had was a DIY shop which opened for two and a half hours on a Sunday morning."

'Nowhere to go'

Then in the 1970s and 1980s the Smiths saw their first competition for trade with the emergence of supermarkets.

"First there was a Tesco and a Kwik Save then the two garage shops on Leckwith Hill. The shops next to us couldn't survive and one by one they went bust."

The last shop - a Spar - disappeared overnight four years ago, the flats above the shops lay empty.

Mr Smith, who fought off retirement at 65 because he wanted to "keep busy and not succumb to something like Alzheimer's disease", realises the end is near.

Customer Eva Griffiths: ' There's nowhere to go'

The Post Office says it has to close some of its urban branches to safeguard the rest. In many cities and towns across Wales and the UK there are simply too many competing for business.

Mr Smith agreed the pattern of customers using the post office had changed.

"Thursday used to be pension day - Tuesday was always family allowance - now it's called family credits. It's changed now."

Eva Griffiths, 91, who was collecting her pension on Thursday, was relieved when Mr Smith helped her fill in a complicated form.

"There's nothing up here in Llandough. It's too far for people to walk - they'll have to take their cars," said Mrs Griffiths.

"We won't go anywhere will we? There's nowhere to go".

'Personal ties'

But custom at this post office and others around Wales has declined as people - many of them older - have moved away to do their business via the bank or at the supermarket or even online.

"You lose the personal ties," he said. "Soon you'll have a barcode tattooed across your forehead and you won't have to say anything... ever."

Down the years customers have become old friends for the postmaster and his wife.

"It's sad because obviously people die. It can be very lowering at times."

But then, he said, there is always another day and the newspapers to get out for the 7am opening seven days a week... until January that is.