AH SNAIL MAIL.
Every week over 50,000 items of post end up in An Post’s returned letters centre in Limerick, having failed to make it all the way to their final destination successfully.
“The vast majority are letters” operations manager Adrian Gordon told DailyEdge.ie, but sometimes there are some rather interesting items to be found among the packages that make their way to the centre.
Here are just a selection of “weird and wacky” items that Gordon and his colleagues have come across so far:
A ringmaster’s whip
A wedding veil
A remote control ash tray that moves back and forth when it’s needed
A cow’s horn
An ice hockey puck
Nazi Memorabilia
Including but not limited to an Africa Corps compass and a cigarette case bearing the symbol of the SS.
A boomerang
“We tried to return it to sender, but it kept on coming back”, Gordon explained.
A fair few care packages
Those warm woolly jumpers, boxes of tea bags and delicious Tayto treats won’t be reaching their final destination without the correct address.
Sex toys, aka ‘romantic’ items’
Gordon didn’t go into detail but he did deliver one important message:
Romance is still alive in Ireland, both in toys and clothing.
He also offered some helpful advice to customers who want to make sure their items reach their final destination.
His top tip was to include a return address, printed clearly on the top left-hand corner of the envelope or package. “That is the most important thing”, he said.
We want to deliver your mail, we don’t want to open it, and we want to be able to deliver your post back to you intact.
You can also use An Post’s address checker to make sure that you’ve got all the correct details.
