Letter 16

This week, two things occurred. One, I almost got to letter saturation level. Two, I ran out of stamp money.

Never fear, however, I managed to pull a letter out of the bag. Well, actually, no, I wrote a short note to be posted, updating a relative on what I got with my Christmas money. A thank you note extension if you will. Really, people have sent longer texts. But this is on a card with an envelope and everything. Not very long though. Who said letters had to be long? Certainly some of my Mitford Sisters letters (yes, I am still reading that) are very short, but then some of them wrote pretty much daily. Right glad am I that it's not 365 Days of Mail!

The second of the failings was a monetary one. Stamps cost money, and they add up. I ran out of stamps and money in my purse. There are four kinds of stamp I regularly use:

• Worldwide postcard (less than 20g in weight) - 76p
• European letter/postcard (less than 60g) - 68p
• English first class - 46p
• English second class 36p

For everything that falls outside those, I go to the Post & Drop machine in the St John's Centre. Nice to hang out in the post office queues. I do object to the fact that the machines don't sell either second class stamps, or the world postcard ones, but we don't live in a perfect world, do we?

The stampless situation will soon be rectified, but I do now have a backlog of postcards to send, letters to post and a package as well. It adds up to a minimum spend of £7.63. The lesson I ought to be learning is to choose a less expensive hobby. The lesson I'm really learning is to put stamps above food on any shopping list. Or to get a contact at the Royal Mail. Do you think the Queen gets free stamps?