LETTER:Record delivery for a Christmas card?

From Mrs Jennifer E. Jarrett

Sir: While recognising the great achievement of the Royal Mail in delivering a record number of letters and cards this Christmas, we hope that our own experience has not been repeated too many times up and down the land.

We have been receiving redirected mail for our daughter. In the redirected package received on 12 December there was a Christmas card, sent in error, which was correctly addressed to a neighbour of my daughter further down the road. We wrote a note on the envelope asking the Post Office to deliver it to the correct address, and put it in our local post box.

One week later, 19 December, we opened another redirected package and, to our amazement, out popped the same Christmas card, but this time joined by another letter to the same address. This time we added a more cryptic note to the envelope asking the Post Office to deliver it correctly.

On 27 December, we received another redirected package, and out popped our friendly card with all its cryptic messages, having now travelled 1,500 miles further than its original journey.

Is this friendly little greetings card destined, like a spacecraft thrown off course, to travel forever in the mailing system going round and round and round?

Yours sincerely,

Jennifer E. Jarrett

Pirton, Hertfordshire

2 January