Dear me! Sister’s letter arrives 54 years after she posted it
TALK about snail mail... pensioner Gill Milbourne has just received a letter from her sister postmarked August 7, 1966.
The note was sent during a visit to the Post Office Tower in London, which had been open just 10 months at the time.
Jean Quinnell, now 83, put a laminated 1966 calendar card inside for airline Air Malawi.
And she sent it so stamp collector Gill could save the four 3d commemorative Post Office Tower stamps on its envelope.
At the time Gill, now 73, and husband Mel were newlyweds and had just moved into a new house in Ipswich – bought for £2,900.
The couple went on to have two children, five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren and still live in the same house.
They are baffled as to why the letter took 19,671 days to arrive.
Gill said: “I recognised my sister’s handwriting. But it was what her writing used to look like.
“When I opened it I saw the 1966 calendar card and I thought, ‘Why has she posted this to me now?’ So I rang her up to ask why she had put the letter through our door and she didn’t know what I was talking about.”
Gill then spotted the original postmark dated August 7, 1966.
She said: “Jean could remember going to the Post Office Tower.
“I guess they had a special facility to post letters from the tower as it was a bit of a novelty.”
Another postmark dated last Tuesday shows it had gone through the Royal Mail’s sorting centre at Chelmsford, Essex, before arriving.
Mel said: “It found Gill in the end.Who knows where it has been all these years?”