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The envelope that the army nearly blew up.
An item that has come to light recently is this envelope which was very nearly blown up by the army bomb disposal, I believe, in the early 1970's. What happened is that my family ordered, by mail order, some christmas cards a couple of months before christmas but then completely forgot about them. In the meantime the I.R.A. decided to launch a christmas bombing campaign by sending letter bombs to people on the UK mainland. After a few had been sent the news bulletins began warning people on what to look out for in their mail. Apparently the envelope seen below matched the description on what people had been warned to look out for on the news and so when it was thrust through our letterbox alarm bells started ringing because we had just been warned on the news.
The envelope was taken outside and placed under a metal bucket and the police were called who also "didn't like the look of it" and didn't make any attempt to open it. Bearing in mind this happened nearly 50 years ago, I believe that the police placed the "suspect package" in the back of their police car and driven to the local police station. The army bomb squad was called to collect the envelope from the police station.
Some time later there was a knock on the door and the army bomb squad delivered our christmas cards after opening the envelope under "controlled conditions" but had been on the verge of blowing the package up.
The hand written note written long after the event by my late father, late in life, records the date as 1989 which is definitely wrong as it happened much earlier. I believe it to be early 1970's but when exactly? The stamps are 5 1/2p indicating post decimalisation, i.e. not earlier than 1970's.
Quite why my parents thought that they were important enough to warrant being sent a letter bomb by the I.R.A. I've no idea because at the time one was a primary school teacher and the other an ambulance driver.
