Everyone was walking around in psychedellc garb saying ‘peace’ ‘far out’ and ‘fab’ and listening to The Ballad of John & Yoko by The Beatles, Something in the Air by Thunderclap Newman and Honky Tonk Woman by The Stones!

But while all this peace, love, harmony and flower power was going around in abundance across the United  Kingdom something had gone awry in the Royal Mail postal system! 

The Daily Telegraph have recently reported that a postcard from Stratford-upon-Avon (Shakespeare country!) was delivered to an address in Almondbury, Yorkshire.  Nothing particularly remarkable in that, except it had arrived 40 years after it was posted!

The current occupants of the house in Broadgate Crescent found the postcard on their doormat amongst their normal post.  The occupants said that the postcard was in excellent condition but on looking at the back they discovered it had an old 5d stamp on it and it was date stamped June or July 1969.  The card was apparently sent from someone called Heather to Mr and Mrs Sedgwick. 

Heather it seemed was having a whale of a time.  She’d been to Wimbledon and sat behind US tennis player Charlie Pasarell who played against Pancho Gozalez in the longest ever tennis match in Wimbledon’s history.  The men’s singles final was eventually won by Rod Laver of Australia; the women’s final was won by the UK’s Ann Jones.  ‘Heather’ had then gone on to Stratford where she’d apparently seen some of the plays and, for once, the sun seemed to be shining!!

The current occupants of the said house in Almondbury, who moved there in 1986, would like to get the card to Mr and Mrs Sedgwick or even possibly return it to ‘Heather’, but it’s not going to be easy to track down sender or addressee as there have been two other occupants between 1969 and 1986, but if anyone out there knows Mr and Mrs Sedgwick or Heather then send details to the Daily Telegraph – I would say ‘answers on a postcard please’ but probably not a particularly wise thing to do in the circumstances!!!  What’s even more ironic is that our postal workers over here in the UK are probably going on strike within the next few weeks.  So will it take them 40 years to clear the backlog when they return?  If so, I’ll be long dead before I receive my Christmas cards for this year!!

So what else happened in the summer of 1969?

On 1st June, John Lennon and Yoko Ono began their ‘bed-in’ to protest against the Vietnam War.

On 20 June, Georges Pompidou was elected as President of France

On 24 June, the UK and Rhodesia severed diplomatic ties

On 1 July, Prince Charles was invested as HRH Prince of Wales

On 8 July, the US made its first troop withdrawals from Vietnam

And on 20 July-(everybody of a certain age knows this one!) Neil Armstrong becomes the first man to walk on the Moon, and I got to watch in colour.  Most families here had black and white tellies but our school had a colour one so all us kids gathered in the assembly hall to watch it in colour!  Far out man! Fab!