Kudos to UK postal system!

January 4, 2007 10:44 AM

Christmas card delivered without address, town or postcode. Great little story! via
posted by ObscureReferenceMan (20 comments total)

Cute.
posted by Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese at 11:03 AM on January 4, 2007

Great story.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 11:03 AM on January 4, 2007

Antonysterical for "obscure reference man" to borrow a link from boingboing.
posted by jonson at 11:06 AM on January 4, 2007

I once sent a Christmas card to my parents that was addressed with their names, B.F.E., and the 5 digit zip. It was delivered. Do you think stuff like this is what pushes postal workers over the brink?
posted by figment of my conation at 11:09 AM on January 4, 2007

My town is actually marked on that map, 9 days is only about twice what it normally takes for a first class letter to get to me, even with address, post code etc. Also, my local supposedly Crown Post Office is now run by Pound Plus, whoever the hell they are. So kudos my arse, useless wankers.
posted by biffa at 11:13 AM on January 4, 2007

I think this is the kind of stuff that helps them from completely going insane, actually. Imagine your job is to sort an incessant stream of mail, your vision tunneling down to cubby holes and canvas sacks. Little mysteries like this would keep any postal worker buoyed for at least a day.
posted by Terminal Verbosity at 11:14 AM on January 4, 2007

Nice story. My own two happy postal stories are that in the 80's when I was street vending on West 53rd Street, I received a letter from a customer who lives in Denmark addressed to

"Nicky's African Art on the street,
near the Museum of Modern Art,
NY, NY, USA"

and I got the letter, delivered to me by the postman on the street, still have it.

The other is that I sent a post card to a very old friend in a village in Ireland. I just wrote their name and the name of the village, writing "please forward if you know where this person now lives" (35 years after I last saw them). It was sent back to America, to my old friend's present address, that person called me and we've been in touch ever since.
posted by nickyskye at 11:18 AM on January 4, 2007

Many years ago, I received a large manila envelope with pictures of my recently deceased brother-in-law. His mother had written on the outside of the envelope, "Pictures--do not bend!" The envelope arrived creased and wrinkled, with the retort of some anonymous postal worker, "Yes, they do!"
posted by leftcoastbob at 11:40 AM on January 4, 2007 [1 favorite]

I once received a letter addressed with only my first name and town. Admittedly, it's a small town in Ireland, but still I thought the postman did a great job.
posted by tiny crocodile at 12:21 PM on January 4, 2007

They also horde parcels sent from the internet in depots which are totally cut off from the world unless, by some miracle of unemployment, you're able to go there between 8am until 12pm. It wouldn't surprise me at all if this sort of thing were funded by selling these parcels.
posted by vbfg at 12:22 PM on January 4, 2007

I once sent a friend a message in a bottle via USPS, no wrapping, no padding, with the letter, address and stamp inside the bottle. It arrived unbroken and caused much admiration for me among her nerdier friends.

However my exploit pales in comparison to the great research done by these folks: Improbable Research
posted by 1f2frfbf at 12:28 PM on January 4, 2007 [3 favorites]

1f2frfbf - Great link!!!
posted by ObscureReferenceMan at 1:03 PM on January 4, 2007

People used to write letters to Ripley's Belive It Or Not and would not address it. I remember one letter that was delivered that simply had an illustration of a man with a rip in his pants. Somehow the post office divined where it was supposed to go. Another had a tombstone with the letters R.I.P.
posted by Astro Zombie at 1:39 PM on January 4, 2007

I can't find a reference on the web, but Don Bradman received a letter which was addressed with only a photo of his eyes.
posted by markr at 3:33 PM on January 4, 2007

Boing Boing posted a link to Envelopes: A Puzzling Journey Through the Royal Mail, which consists of a woman's postcards sent through the Royal Mail featuring puzzles the RM had to solve to figure out the address. Very cool.
posted by Dr. Zira at 4:58 PM on January 4, 2007

Kind of makes you wonder if people who work in dead letter offices every treat undelivered mail like the police working cold case files.
posted by quin at 4:59 PM on January 4, 2007

People used to write letters to Ripley's Belive It Or Not and would not address it. I remember one letter that was delivered that simply had an illustration of a man with a rip in his pants. Somehow the post office divined where it was supposed to go. Another had a tombstone with the letters R.I.P.

There was also one that just said, "I don't think you're going to get this, Bob."
posted by roll truck roll at 9:22 PM on January 4, 2007

that's beautiful.
posted by subaruwrx at 9:28 PM on January 4, 2007

This happens all the time* where I live, for example:

'Dave Creasey, who has a son called Dave Creasey and a brother who has a fast food van, Isle of Man'

or

'It [a Christmas card] had been delivered to them with just "Norman" on it and the Post Office had written on the envelope "Try Sir Norman Wisdom".

(* for infrequent values of "all the time")
posted by Chunder at 3:39 AM on January 5, 2007

My uncle used to send me a small pumpkin in the mail every Halloween. He'd just write the address directly on the pumpkin with a marker, and put the stamp right on there. Delivered, no problem.
posted by inigo2 at 6:54 AM on January 5, 2007