The French postcard that took 72 years to arrive

Lame excuses - at one time or another we must all used have used them to try to wriggle our way out of an uncomfortable situation with something, that even to our own ears, sounds rather as though it's bordering on the preposterous.

Perhaps that's how a young man felt back in 1937 when he sent a postcard to his fiancée in Monaco from the mountains of Saint-Etienne-de-Tinée in the department of Alpes-Maritimes in southeastern France.

The distance, as the crow flies, 103 kilometres.

But of course crows don't deliver and the postcard had to go through a sorting office in the southern French city of Nice.

The postal service at the time probably wasn't up to modern day standards, but there again likely as not neither was the volume of mail, but but Fernande Robéri, an apprentice hairdresser at the time, never received the card.

And how do we know? Well, it has turned up - 72 years after it was sent.

The postcard apparently arrived at the post office in Monaco last week from the sorting office in the nearby French city of Nice.

Dated 11 August 1937, it had been sent by a certain J.A Achierdi to his fiancée with the less-than-brief and certainly far-from-romantic greeting "Bon souvenir".

It seemed to have made the 89 kilometres from Saint-Etienne-de-Tinée to Nice with the minimum of delay, but the same cannot be said for the final 20 kilometres to Monaco.

"The only explanation is that the card somehow fell behind a desk or a piece of furniture at the sorting office," said the director of the post office in Monaco, Jean-Luc Delcroix, which for sure let's the postal service off the hook.

Sadly Fernande Robéri will never know either the length of time the postcard took to arrive or the way her fiancé had with words. She died in 1969.

But on Tuesday, the card will finally be handed over to a member of her family - 72 years after it was sent.