Dear Fred,

I am sorry, too, that you never received a reply to your letter of August 22nd, as I would have loved to come. The truth of the matter is, your letter/email containing the invitation reached me only at the weekend, via the local vicar. When he called on me with it, I was as puzzled as you no doubt are now, so let me explain.

Your letter/email was one of three addressed to me that were found in a Wellington boot bought at the church's summer fete. Obviously the boot was one of the pair that I gave to the jumble sale; but how did the letters/emails - unopened/unread - come to be in the boot?

This can only be speculation, of course, but it can be the only explanation. Around the time you wrote to me, Fanny and I shifted some furniture in the hall. As you know, having visited our home many times, a row of Wellington boots always stands to the left of the front door. Both of us remember temporarily moving these boots out of our way to give ourselves more elbow room, and for more than half-an-hour, I suppose, the boots stood under the front door. If the postman put any letters through the letter-box/printed out any emails during this time they would have dropped straight into a boot, it now occurs to us in retrospect. When, a fortnight later, we parcelled up some old clothes etc. for the jumble, the last thing we thought of doing was checking the wellies for mail/email.

I can understand you being upset, but a telephone call at the time would have confirmed that we never received your letter/email. And, as I hope you now realise, there sometimes is a perfectly good excuse for a wholly innocent discourtesy.

Yours ever,

Dear Sir,

When I received this morning your curt reminder of the conditions laid down by you in agreeing to my overdraft, I realised that I had never seen the said conditions. This wouldn't be the first letter to go missing recently, so I at once (for reasons which will become apparent) telephoned the estate agents handling the sale of the empty house next door.

One of their representatives very kindly called round with the keys to the house and there, as I suspected, was your letter along with half-a-dozen others addressed to me but put by the postman through the wrong front door. I have taken up the matter with the Post Office.

In the meantime, I will of course give you the undertakings you seek; but not having received your letter until today, I have not had the benefit of your guidelines for the past month. I would therefore be grateful if you would honour any cheques dated prior to today.

Yours faithfully,

Dear Aunt Susan,

I feel a real heel for not coming to see you in hospital, and so does Fanny, but we only got your card today. No, not the Post Office's fault for a change! Your card has been glued to the bottom of a tea tray for the past six weeks and would still be there if it wasn't for our new daily who has a fixation about cleaning underneath everything.

I can only think that on the bottom of the tray there must have been some of that very delicious (but very sticky) heather honey you so kindly gave us for Christmas and that the tray was placed on top of the mail on the dining-room table at breakfast before I had a chance to read it. From now on, Superglue is out! I'm sticking (so to speak) to your heather honey.

Hoping you're now well on the road to recovery, despite the lack of bedside visitors.

Fondest best wishes from us both,

Dear Mr Edwards,

Just as I thought! I did in fact write to you in May, cancelling the order. What I omitted to do, however, was to post the letter. I placed the envelope in the left-hand jacket pocket of my lightweight linen suit, intending to pop it into a letterbox on the way to work, but for some reason I forgot. Because of the cold, wet, and windy summer we've had, that was the last time I have worn the suit - until the warm spell we've been enjoying this week, when I discovered the letter.

I hope this clears up what might have been an unfortunate misunderstanding.

Yours sincerely,

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