There's a massive backlog of mail in the post office system currently. As far as we can tell, deliveries fall into two categories: those that arrived when they should - at the beginning of last week - and those that have started to arrive over the last couple of days. I imagine this is all made worse because of the build-up to Christmas.

heh he he...nice one Fraser...

...among the first to come, but this month it was very late. I got it maybe three days ago. Don't panic - it'll come!

That said, the snow has sent the country into a tailspin: I ordered something from Amazon, using CityLink next-day delivery. Took nine days to come. I know there's been a lot of snow, but jesus- by, say, Canadian standards, it's an icing sugar dusting. Is it too much to ask that our country's basic infrastructure function even under a few inches of unexpected precipitation? We got almost no snow at all, and even in C. London it wasn't super heavy, but the other week *all* the trains out of Waterloo got cancelled, comprehensively fucking lots of people. It just seems like things ought to run better, somehow.

(Natch, I'm not having a pop at the Word people - I know subscriptions and deliveries are handled elsewhere and have a lot of factors influencing them which are out of Fraser & Co's control. I'm more surprised that, nationally, we seem so entirely unable to deal with some serious-ish weather conditions.)

I should really be grateful for the lack of a distraction at the moment. 3000 words about the misconceptions pupils have about fractions won't write themselves.

..... and we don't have any snow !

but then I am in Scotland, and not a lot has come through our postbox in the last two weeks. Having said that, a delivery of heating oil appeared today (not through the postbox, I should clarify) so we won't run out this year like we did last Christmas. Also, an Amazon order, sent like Bob's via Citylink, finally appeared after wandering the length and breadth of the country for two weeks.

But can't say I'm surprised!

mine finally arrived today.

to anyone in the UK - there are going to be some Royal Mail deliveries this coming Sunday.

As mentioned in the other thread on this subject a couple of days ago I work for RM and we've just had an email today about this. Should say that it's only for 3 million households - and I don't think the message specified where/large urban areas at a guess - and I reckon that only equates to about 1 in 10 addresses countrywide (although some of those will be business addresses, of course).

My copy finally arrived yesterday, about 8/9 days late by usual standards.

Post here in Glasgow returned to normal today. Of course there could be another pile of mail that I don't know about that will appear tomorrow, but Word & Private Eye are both here now.

...in leafy Solihull