Special delivery to Cape Town

Here’s illustrator Kerry Hugill finally seeing all her hard work in hard copy.

Talented Kerry Hugill illustrated The Red-Letter Day brilliantly – with seven full-page captioned cartoons and lots of clever drop-in illustrations. But she lives in Cape Town, South Africa, so we’ve never met. Though I hope we will, some day.

Kerry was due to get several copies of my new magical history adventure with its 1916 finale, but I also wanted to give her something unique – so I spent ages painstakingly bubble-wrapping a signed and framed picture of the vibrant Easter Rising book cover with Kerry’s books neatly tucked inside the frame.

However I really didn’t think this through. The postage costs for this bulky special delivery by air freight or courier were sky-high (!) so I sent it surface mail – still pricey, but a lot less – from the local post office on May 12 and skipped home, all happy with myself.

Until Kerry emailed to say that surface mail from Ireland to South Africa would most likely take three months.

Nooooooooooo!

Thankfully this story has a happy ending: the parcel landed in Cape Town on May 21.

Much gratitude to all the world’s postal services, including An Post involved in this super speedy dispatch!