Brown paper packages tied up with string

We returned from the supermarket around midday one day last week to find a card from the postman, saying he had tried to deliver a package (brown paper and string, he specified) and that we should allow forty-eight hours before attempting to claim it from the sorting office. Forty-eight hours is a long time to wait when you've received an e-mail from Small Beer Press saying your copy of Cloud & Ashes is on its way...

So durham_rambler lurked in wait, and when the postman returned after lunch to deliver the mail (what? our daily post comes around two in the afternoon) he leapt out, and made the postman promise to deliver the mystery package the next day. But we didn't really think it was a mystery, I wasn't expecting any other package - and I was so impatient to get my hands on my lovely book...

The next day we didn't dare go out all morning, in case we should miss the parcel post. And finally at lunch time (rather later than we had come home the previous day and discovered that we'd missed the post) our package arrived: and of course it wasn't Cloud & Ashes at all. It was two separate packages, one of them wrapped in brown paper, the other a jiffy bag, and the string which tied them together had been provided by the Post Office. (This amuses me immensely, though I can't explain why).

The brown paper package was a gift from Shetland - a picture book and a CD of fiddle music and some lovely Shetland soap - all the more delightful for being almost entirely unexpected. And the jiffy bag contained the details of our holiday in Iceland - so it must be true, then, we must definitely be going to Iceland, we have a road atlas. A road atlas of Iceland, now there's a strange and wonderful thing. It was like Christmas, all this unpacking of goodies.

And Cloud & Ashes arrived yesterday, so all is well.