“He gave me my mail and said ‘Are you expecting anything from Germany?’ and I said 'I might be - we’ve got friends over there’,” said Mr Biggs.
“He said 'Have a look at this letter’ - so I had a look and turned it over and our friends’ address was on the back of it and on the front it just said England.”
Mr Biggs said the card had been sent from a sorting office in Germany close to Gloucester’s twin town of Trier and had not been opened.
“I said 'How on earth did you know it was for me?’ and he said 'I didn’t, I’ve been wandering around with this’, said Mr Biggs.
"My wife and I are absolutely shocked but this puts posties at five or six stars and top of the tree for me this Christmas.”
The card, it is believed, may have originally been addressed correctly and so was sent to the right area of England - but with an address label that fell off at some point.
A Royal Mail spokesman said: “Royal Mail’s team of 'address detectives’ are renowned for their ability to ensure poorly addressed items of mail reach their intended recipients however, even by their standards, this is pretty impressive.”
the royal mail detectives are a weird bunch, and like if it was addressed right it would get right but i love the idea they went “well it’s from Trier so send it to the twinned town first”
Last summer my friend’s mom discovered hundreds of teeny tiny toad tadpoles in a puddle in her driveway. It was drying up, so she asked me about moving them to a nearby pond. I told her not to, because moving amphibians unnaturally between water bodies can spread disease.
So she filled up a watering can every morning and every evening and replenished the puddle, adding dechlorinator drops she uses for her fish tank to make sure the water was safe.
The tadpoles survived and grew up into little toads who eventually hopped out of the puddle.
I think about the tenderness and compassion of this a lot.
