Postman praised after delivering parcel addressed to 'somewhere in Sheffield'

Darrell Gilmour, 56, was baffled at first when he saw the vague address along with a rambling description of the intended recipient, David Easson.

The sender Marten Wedebrand, 50, did not know David’s address and instead wrote all the details he knew about him on the parcel including that he has “a child, or a dog, or both.”

The note detailed David’s previous work as a sports reporter for the BBC and his wife’s name, Helen.

Marten wrote the envelope, sent all the way from Sweden, contained “vital survival stuff” for his friend.

The message ended with: “Please try and find him and give this to him and dear postman stay safe.”

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Marten used to listen to David’s old show for William Hill Radio from abroad and would send Swedish chocolate into the station for the crew to enjoy.

He did not want to ask journalist David for his home address as their previous contact had always been through the radio station.

After receiving the parcel, Darrell, who works for the Royal Mail at Sheffield Mail Centre, then turned to social media to piece together the clues and hunt down David to deliver the package.

He said: “It was intriguing trying to find him and I didn’t know whether I would be able to. It did have a lot of information on it about him, which made life a bit easier.”

Darrell searched for sports journalist David on Google and then found him on Facebook.

David, 41, woke up to a message from Darrell which had been sent at 3.55am on Tuesday (21 April), asking for his full address so they could finally deliver the gift.

Darrell said: “I have worked for the Royal Mail for 30 years and we do enjoy trying to get mail to the people it belongs to. It could have been someone else that got hold of it and they could have thrown it in the vague box and it would have been sent back if it had a return address.

“Work is very hectic because I think everybody is just buying online at the moment, stuck at home. This made me smile, and I’m glad we were able to deliver it.”

The package reached David on April 22 after Darrell tracked him down.

David said: “I think it made me proud of the postal service. The Royal Mail have got a really tough job at the moment. It would have been a lot easier just to file it under B for bin.”

The “vital survival stuff” contained in the parcel was a six pack of Kvikk Lunsj, a Norweigan chocolate bar.

David first encountered the Scandanavian chocolate while covering the Youth Olympic Games in Lillehammer in Norway in 2012.

David said: “Kvikk Lunsj are pretty much Kit Kats but with Milka chocolate around them. There's something about them that I’ve always liked since the dark days in the snow in Norway.”

David has both a child and a dog, and his wife Helen is a nurse in Sheffield.

Marten posted the unusual package from Sweden with six stamps on it and it took three weeks to reach Sheffield.

Marten said: “I felt a bit sorry about you British people having a terrible year and even worse for David is that he, like me, is a Liverpool fan and he couldn’t even get to celebrate our first Premier League title due to the coronavirus.

“So just for fun I thought that he would like some chocolate, which he had mentioned he liked.

“I was not sure if it would arrive but I hoped it would. It would have been easy for anyone handling it on the way to simply just give up without trying to find David.

“I am impressed that it reached him and as it is always easy to complain about mail getting lost or delivered late, I want to send my gratitude to the postal service in the UK.”

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