S. Worthen | Weblog

Just this year, the UK phased out "second delivery," to the disappointment of many. Second delivery, that is, of the daily mail. It was seen as the closing of an era, an era which had been gradually closing over the course of the past century or so. One and two hundred years ago, you see, mail delivery could be quite frequent, even as much as 4 or 6 times a day, depending on how much mail was being sent, and just where the delivery address was located. Jane Austen's heroines regularly depend upon such frequency for sending notes back and forth over the course of a day to arrange for a meeting later in that same day. Doing so is possible when the post is delivered so frequently, and notes are written back in reply.

I can't even remember receiving more than one delivery a day at home in the US. I'm not sure it ever happened there during my lifetime. I think that might have been part of the amazing turnaround time of email, where delivery might happen at any point during the day, and it's possible to reply several times over the course of a day to work out details for a meeting later that same day.

All of this is a long-winded way of saying that for the past month or so, I've been down to one delivery a day with my U of T email address. Well, not literally one delivery a day, but it can regularly take at least 12 hours for an email sent to it to finally arrive in my inbox. None of my other email addresses suffer from this delay. It's frustrating. Just this weekend, I missed an invitation to go play games at a friend's house because of it. I had to wait until this morning to reply to an email which C. had received last night. We postponed ordering TTT because the confirmation email didn't arrive until today.

Most of the time this email address works just fine, but if you're ever in a hurry to reach me, send me email by any other means, including my LJ email address. The Austen heroines would understand.