Very commercially kind indeed

When I wrote this morning that British merchants wanted to fulfill their clients' wishes, I had not open my letter box yet:

Here is one of the covers I put in the red post box at the Stampex philatelic show on Wednesday 27 February 2008. Above the box, a message announced that all postcards and letters correctly franked would be cancelled with the special mark. The Royal Mail apoligized for a longer delivery because the mail was to sorted by hand.

How can you guarantee that the covers would not be - accidentally or carelessly - cancelled again by a machine? This morning came the answer: the mail travelled into a plastic bag. Markings announced for the machines that the mail is a first class priority.

One objection from purist: no rose bars were printed in the process, you cannot proove the mail eventually travelled like any other mail.

Answer: the same day, I put two covers in a usual mail box in Victoria Street. It is a business and commercial street in Westminster. They arrived on Friday, one day before :

Posts of Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom have a very bad taste for their new cancelling machines: difficult to read, rose bars printed on stamps.

Two different public, two different services.

Some of you may have deduced I overfranked my covers with stamps from the Lest We Forget 2007 minisheet, issued in souvenir of World War One soldiers. 48 pence would have been sufficient. My explanation on that point in a next article of the Seb's London Season.