I buy, or rather used to buy. quite a few books from overseas. These books were usually background reading on topics I'm interested in, and either not available as ebooks, or as is often the case with anything other than a mass market ebook, a new ebook download is more expensive than a second hand copy from overseas. Basically, it comes down to (a) choice and (b) price.
Come the pandemic, overseas purchases more or less stopped, as a result of the slow down in international mail.
It's gradually be getting better, with tracked mail taking about a month from the UK, and untracked mail - which is how second hand books usually come - about six weeks. Books from the States take a bit longer, say eight weeks.
Well, we were away last week, which of course meant that a whole load of overseas mail turned up. Usually we get our mail sent to our PO Box rather than our street address as that means we don't have to be home to collect it. Having had a postie leave an ipad (fortunately sealed in a plastic pack) out in the rain, you can understand why.
So, being a good little vegemite I went up to collect our mail this morning. Basically everything was what we'd been expecting, except for one package from the UK that was intact but distinctly scuffed and battered.
When I opened it, it turned out to be a book I'd ordered back in March, and which had been written off as lost in the mail. Well obviously someone had found it along the way. There's no tracking information or extra postmarks on the package to show where it went walkabout so I guess its journey will forever be a minor mystery ...
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