The 30th birthday card that arrived just days after my 40th
IN a classic case of better late than never, a birthday card sent to a Galway man by his parents to mark his 30th birthday arrived last week, just days after his 40th party.
And to add insult to injury, An Post still managed to deliver it to the wrong house. And in a further setback, a postal order sent with the card cannot be cashed as it is out of date.
Amazingly, nobody knows where the card, sent from Westport in Mayo to Andrew Meehan in Kilconnell, Co. Galway, has been for the last decade.
Andrew initially thought the card was a late arrival for his 40th which fell on March 27.
After all, it had gone to a neighbour’s house this month before being passed on to him.
But then he noticed the stamp was for only 35c and a postmark that read, March 25, 2008. When
Mam said: ‘I told you I sent it!’
he opened the envelope, he was shocked to discover a card that should have arrived ten years ago. It even contained a €20 postal order which, frustratingly, is no longer valid.
Written inside the card was a greeting from his parents, Tommy and Nellie, and sister, ‘A very happy 30th birthday. Enjoy your day. Lots of love as always, Ma and Da and Roseanne.’
An astonished Andrew said yesterday: ‘My dad passed away seven years ago with the unsolved mystery on his mind: him and my mum were always adamant they had sent it. In fact, when I told Mum what happened, she said, in the way only Irish Mammies can: “I told you I sent it.”
‘Mammy wasn’t certain of my exact address so she had put down my name and then: “The house beside the Co-Op”, as we live next door to it. But over the years, I have had hundreds of letters addressed exactly that way.
‘The really strange thing is that [the postman] said if it had been delivered somewhere else and redirected, it would have been stamped by whatever post office it ended up in. But apart from the normal postmark, there was no other markings on it.
‘It’s a genuine mystery. I haven’t bothered to ask An Post about it: if it took them ten years to deliver it, and they still got the wrong house, God knows how long it would take them to find out where it was all this time.’
In a statement issued to the Irish Daily Mail, An Post said: ‘It’s a mystery. Next-day delivery is our thing, not next decade. But we’re glad Andrew was reunited with his post. If he gets in touch, we might just look after that postal order too.’