Late arrival for 1966 postcard

Late arrival for 1966 postcard

The card took 37 years to travel around 160 miles

A pensioner has received a holiday postcard from her niece almost four decades after it was sent.

Peggy Amis was visiting friends in Wallington, south London in 1966 when she posted the card to her aunt Dolly Seago in Gimingham, Norfolk.

But somewhere on the 160-mile trip it got delayed and only turned up two weeks ago.

Mrs Amis, now 61, who lives in Mundesley, Norfolk, was called by her local post office who said a card had arrived for her 96-year-old aunt.

It was in a plastic bag with a standard apology from Royal Mail saying sorry for the damage

Peggy Amis

She was surprised to recognise the street scenes of Croydon on the card she herself had sent 37 years earlier.

Mrs Amis, said: "I looked at it and thought: 'this looks peculiar.

"It was in a plastic bag with a standard apology from Royal Mail saying sorry for the damage.

"But it was in a perfect condition."

'Meanie'

She added: "All my aunts had received a card from me as far as I knew.

"Dolly had called me a meanie when I returned from the holiday and at the time I wondered what she meant."

Mrs Amis, a former postal worker, believes the postcard slipped behind something at a sorting office.

She said her aunt, a postwoman during the Second World War, plans to put the treasured card in a frame at the care home where she lives.

A spokeswoman for Royal Mail said: "We can't see any reason for this delay and cannot give any explanation for it.

"It has happened in the past but we don't know what has happened here."