Pensioner’s poopy pilfered post problem solved
A pensioner who waged a two year campaign against the Post Office for losing his mail was heartbroken to find that he had been mistakenly posting his letters in a dog waste bin.
Myopic World War II veteran Alf Spence, of Bedale Yorkshire, was in the act of posting a card when a passer-by saw what he was doing and intervened, explaining that what he was posting his great-grandson’s birthday card into wasn’t a post box, but a dog poop waste bin owned by the local council.
The realisation of his mistake put an end to a two-year string of complaints to the Post Office about his missing mail. The 91-year-old said:
“I walked down to the postbox, like I do every week, and began placing our Tommy’s third birthday card in the little slot.”
“A woman walking her dog came up to me, tapped me on the shoulder, and asked what I was doing.”
“I thought she was going to cry when I told her. She held my hand and pointed out that the postbox was on the other side of the road.”
“I’ve not got the best eyesight these days but even so, the postbox and the dog dirt box are almost identical. They’re both red, the same shape and stuck on a post.”
“I bet I’m not the only pensioner to get confused. The bloody council should never have put them so close together.”
Unfortunately for Alf and Tommy, local dog walkers did the decent thing when their dog had to go, and so the bin experienced heavy use.
Alf has since contacted the Post Office to formally apologise for accusing them of losing his post.
The revelation is a relief for his daughter Susan, who thought that the veteran of the 1942 raid on Dieppe was going cuckoo. Speaking to the Sunday Sport, she said:
“Every time I asked dad if he’d remembered one of kids’ birthdays, he’d say, ‘Yes, there’s a cheque in the post’.”
“When they never showed up we thought he was either losing his marbles or was just plain lying. So it’s nice to know he was at least trying, bless him.”
