The postcard "lost" for 41 years, vanishes again

Perhaps you're an optimist and believe that nothing ever gets "lost in the post" and instead mail failing to arrive at its destination on time has simply "gone missing"...for a while.

It's there, somewhere in the system. But nobody really has a clue where.

(from Wikipedia)

Well a cynic might say that's what the postal service would want us to believe.

Except occasionally there really is evidence that our sometimes tried and tested patience is not misplaced.

Such is the case of a postcard, according to the regional daily La Dépêche du Midi, sent by a certain Monsieur Le Petit in July.

He was holidaying in the southwestern village of Praz-sur-Arly and wanted to say a simple "hello" to his friends, Madame et Monsieur Bigot, who were renting a gite just over 630 kilometres away in the southwestern village of Saint-Martin-de-Vers.

"The area is very beautiful," wrote M Le Petit.

"See you soon. Enjoy your holiday and have a good rest."

The card plopped through the letter box of Charles Dardenne, the farmer who owns the gite, at the end of August.

But the Bigots weren't there.

And with good cause.

Because the card was postmarked July, 1970.

Yes it had taken a mere 41 years to reach its destination.

Dardenne, when interviewed by the paper for Thursday's edition said he was thinking about tracking down the Bigot family and M Le Petit to find out what had happened to them.

Clearly though, the postcard had other thoughts, because a day later, when contacted by Agence France Presse, the farmer said it had gone missing - again.

"It's a mystery, but I cannot find it," he said.

"Perhaps it'll make a reappearance in another 41 year, but I won't be around to see it," he added.

Aliens?

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.