My fellow fountain-pen fanatics at The Fountain Pen Network do keep me informed. I've learned that there is to be yet another UK postal strike tomorrow and Friday - but this one is to be national. I've seen statistics that 120,000 of 140,000 UK postal workers will be striking those days, and the FPN folks seem to think that will grind postal service to a halt.
Here's the info from the Royal Mail website.
I don't know the postal workers' reasons for striking, but I imagine they're pretty good. I sympathize with all my UK correspondents and readers for the disruption of their mail - please share your experiences in comments, is it bad? worse than you thought? not a problem? - but I also sympathize with postal workers, who tend to be under-appreciated in this country. Maybe that's not the case in the UK, I don't know - UK readers, I'd love to hear from you about this.
You may wonder why I give so much attention to the UK: quite honestly, I have a lot of correspondents and blog readers in that fine country, and I am generally just blown away by the excellent mail service. Maybe the grass is greener on the other side, but I regularly receive letters and postcards 2-3 days faster from the UK than from the midwestern US, and 1-2 days faster from the US west coast. (I keep track of the postmarks and arrival dates in my little letter log - yeah, I'm that OCD about it!)
Oh well... it's snail mail, and one always hopes it will arrive eventually. I guess the waiting is part of the charm... oui?
