I'VE already had two items of post through my letterbox this week that aren't for me.

One a magazine (identical to mine) for another woman in Grappenhall, but who lives nowhere near me and a letter for a neighbour up the road.

This is by no means an isolated incident.

Some months ago I got a stack of post addressed to a man with an unusual sounding name - who lived on Walton Road. Not exactly a close neighbour.

There was a huge pack of it - all in an elastic band - including a fishing magazine.

So I thought I'd try to catch the postman to give it all back.

I didn't see my postman but a few days later saw a postwoman a few doors away.

I rushed out to hand over the Walton Road man's post but she wouldn't accept it.

She couldn't take it she told me, it wasn't allowed.

She advised me to re-post it back in a postbox! How ridiculous and why should I have to do that?

If I'm getting lots of other people's post, I wonder how much of mine is sat in someone else's porch?

Strikes or no strikes, I'm afraid the post just isn't reliable any more.

Today at work I received a parcel from a colleague in the north east.

It was a Powerpoint presentation on a disc - he was giving the presentation yesterday at our annual conference and had sent it by post as a back-up in case of any computer glitches.

It was posted on October 25th by recorded delivery and had cost more than £1.

So despite the extra cost for a superior service it had taken seven days to arrive - outrageous.

I know for a fact that important post for my family has already gone astray.

In the summer, my son was waiting for a letter about buying his house, which never arrived.

A copy of the letter had to be e-mailed to him when we realised that it had disappered without trace.

I've posted a couple of letters today - one is important about my pension and I have to say I'm worried it's going to get to our head office at all. If it goes missing then I'm in real trouble.

On the Royal Mail's website today it says encouragingly: "There is no strike action currently taking place, and we are making good progress getting our services back to normal as quickly as possible."

I won't hold my breath!