He had been racing to the door, hoping for a publishing deal for his science-fiction books. Instead, Paul Edwards found a half-torn, screwed-up bag on his doormat with a note of ‘sincere apologies’ from Royal Mail — delivering a copy of Mother & Baby magazine he had ordered 19 years ago.
Edwards, 52, bought the magazine in 2007 while his daughter was 18 months old and his son was due in three months. The parcel never arrived — until last Friday, when it finally dropped through his letterbox in Chester.
“A father ordered a parenting magazine in 2007; it arrived 19 years later with an apology from Royal Mail.”
His children are now 20 and 18, both at university. “What really got me was the ‘apologies for the inconvenience’,” Edwards told the BBC. “My two children have now left home.”
He described the experience as “just bizarre”. “Like a lot of relatively new parents, you sign up for subscriptions for things to give you advice, offers and provide things to do with the children — then obviously everyone realises you have to work it out for yourself,” he said. “I’m not sure we realised at the time that the magazine was missing. Then it’s suddenly arrived in the post.”
A post about the incident on X has garnered 1.5 million views and nearly 60,000 likes, with many users sharing their own tales of late deliveries. “I guess a big part of British culture is to complain about the post or trains being late, so it rings true for so many,” Edwards added.
Royal Mail said it checks its delivery offices and sorting machines daily, and it was likely the magazine had been put back into the postal system by someone rather than lost. A spokesman said: “Once an item is in the postal system then it will be delivered to the address. Over the last year more than 92% of letters arrived on time and over 99% within seven working days.”
But the company faces scrutiny over its performance. Ofcom has launched an investigation into Royal Mail for missing annual delivery targets, with 24.3% of first-class mail failing to arrive on time in the year to March, according to the postal regulator. That is worse than the previous year’s 23.5%.
Edwards said “common sense would say chuck it in the bin” rather than deliver the magazine after 19 years, but conceded it was “inevitable things go missing” and “thankfully this wasn’t that important”. He said the contradiction of waiting for publishing news while receiving a two-decade-old parenting magazine “just really tickled me”.
As for his children, he said they had “now left home”. The magazine, of course, arrived far too late to help.