Size matters. Thickness.

Last week, I received a To Pay card in the post, for underpaid postage. The front of the card has the local delivery office address and space stamps to be affixed to pay what was due. The fee can be paid online, but I wanted to see who sent it/what it was, so I visited the delivery office one morning (hours are shorter than they used to be, as I'm pretty sure I headed there one afternoon a few years back to collect a parcel that did not fit through the letterbox) and found a polite RM person. He showed me what came, and demonstrated that it would not fit through the 5mm slot (the size thickness for standard letters). I knew who it was from and paid with 2 second class stamps (as they are now 75p each).

Bilingual Welsh/English "Fee To Pay" card from Royal Mail 

I got the item home and tried my own letter template ruler. The letter did get through it, but then I noticed the slot has rounded corners and that takes the gap to almost 6mm. I had not noticed that my 5mm measuring slot was just a fraction bigger than it should have been. I do hope any mail for overseas I have sent, has not fallen foul of the thickness. 

Inco 2023 round up.

Well, April has come marking the end of March, the month informally named InCoReMo - International Correspondence Replying Month coming after February which was International Correspondence Writing Month. For this year, I put my address up on the exchange page alone with 5 not-all-that-serious questions to give the letter writers something to write about if they were stuck. It can be difficult to know what to write especially for InCoWriMo where long-term correspondence may not be a participant's aim from the challenge, so no need for a letter intro CV. I know I can't write to everyone, but am a little disappointed in myself because I did not surprise as many people this year as I thought I would. I drew up a shortlist but ended up concentrating on replying to existing penfriends where many of the connections started due to earlier InCoWriMos. It is a little disappointing also that not every letter gets replied to. I reckon I've sent over 50 letters in the last 10 years of InCoWriMo that have not yielded a response. Even though in theory, I have intended to reply to all the InCo mail I've received over the years, some items do not warrant nor deserve responses. However, all those that do deserve a reply, I do write and send. I still have a few surprise letters received in March to respond to.

Tomorrow sees a postage rate rise. Although I can afford it, I wish RM would encourage letter writing and card sending rather than totally neglecting delivering letters which is part of their 6-day a week service obligation, though the CEO has said on record that they do not prioritise parcels instead. 

I do hope a satisfactory conclusion will be forthcoming, and RM will be able to be great again.