Letters
When I first lived in England, I lived in Cambridge and my address (for those were days of letter writing) was, to me, a beautiful marvel of simplicity.
Stuntmother
Pembroke College
Cambridge
There was a post code but it actually didn’t matter if you put it on the envelope or not. I loved that so few words on an envelope would still result in a letter finding me. Ed’s address book was filled with addresses without post codes, sometimes with house names instead of numbers and tiny villages distinguished by being Nr. (near) somewhere larger. In those days, addresses were also staggered so that every line was indented just a little bit more than the previous line, like this:
Master Edward Fiddlesticks Horleyhump
Meadow House,
Tavistock Road,
Grimley,
Nr. Cirencester,
GLOS
This charmed me (although pretty much everything that year charmed me). So unlike the number riddled, mechanical addresses of Queens, where I grew up. I became an avid letter writer, writing and receiving perhaps half a dozen letters a week, many of which I still have. Indeed, Ed and I wrote letters for the long years of our long distance relationship, all but a few of which I have stuffed in a box somewhere.
Then the Royal Mail asked everyone to stop using commas and indenting lines, so the computers stood a better chance of reading the address, and also pushed for everyone to use postal codes. A tiny, but to me regrettable, bit of romance went out of addressing envelopes. Yet I still admired the Royal Mail for being such a cheerful and determined carrier of mail.
Now there’s even more reason to admire the Royal Mail. They have delivered a letter with no address on it at all. Just a map with a little arrow pointing to where the writer thinks the recepient likely lives. And they found him and delivered it! What wonderfulness! I forgive them wholeheartedly for asking me to know what the postcodes are. Such romance transcends numbers. Such romance is indefatigable.
Love the news snippet: great story! Your post reminded me that I have a box stuffed full of letters from MY year at Edinburgh University. Same romance of the post, plus you got mail delivery TWICE A DAY! Imagine that.
peterhouse – cool! my sister was at girton, her husband at kings, and my cousin at st john’s. fantastic place, isn’t it?
i didn’t read about that post office thing – what a great story. i only wish the postman who was supposed to deliver my skiing trousers before christmas had shown such determination! they never materialised at all – brrrrr.
i never realised you were a closet lurker! speak out, woman! even if you have nothing to say … you know it’s never stopped me!
My dad was a rural route mail carrier and he often delivered to addresses that weren’t much more than “My Uncle Ed on Bear’s Den Road.” He would also take the pie from the Walker sisters’ mailbox and deliver it across town to their friend Millie who would invite him in for a piece!
The thing I always appreciated about the Royal Mail when I lived in London was that I got delivery before 9am every day, and on some days, a second delivery in the afternoon. There were a couple of occasions when I mailed something in the morning and a friend across town reported receiving it later that same day. Amazing.
I think I now know what I would like to do for a living.
Deliver mail for the Royal Mail.
Wonderful.
Pembroke, NOT Peterhouse!
(The vanity of small differences)
Humans *do* deliver mail far better than computers, apparently.
When I lived in Lewisburg, PA, I received a letter from DH’s friend (an absent-minded professor), who wrote our name, the street but no number, and the city and state. It arrived without a problem. Such is small-town life … something to look forward to when you move.
Sorry for the lateness of this comment but…. your post reminded me of something i read some time ago. So I’ve been hunting for it and have amanged to find it! In ‘Notes from a Big Country’ Bill Bryson described how a letter he sent to a friend in California “c/o Black oak Books, Berkeley, California’. After 41 days the letter was returned to Bill unsent. Where had it been (on holiday in sunny California). He then goes on to describe how an article in the Smithsonian magazine asserts that a letter waqs successfully delivered by the US Postal Service bearing the address:
HILL
JOHN
MASS
Someone worked out that it had been sent to John Underhill, Andover, Mass.
So some faith was restored!