Earlier this afternoon I was standing on a street corner in Kensington, looking up directions on Google Maps to a cafe a friend had recommended to me.

I noticed two rather attractive ladies walking towards me, chatting with each other about the whereabouts of a crystal shop in the area. They too had a map open on their phone trying to find where it was. As it happened, I knew precisely where the crystal shop was, as I’d visited only a week ago to browse through their impressive shelves of gems & minerals and to sample a cup of their medicinal Chaga Mushroom tea. I asked the girls as they passed me, “Are you looking for crystals?”

They both stopped, gave me a quick once-over with a suspicious look in their eyes and stuttered “ahh… no, thank you” before they scooted off in a hurry.

Puzzled by their dismissal, I overheard one of the girls remark to the other a little further up the road, “Did he think we wanted crystal meth?”

It’s good to know I can pass for a local drug dealer!

House Of Energy, Kensington Market
House Of Energy, Kensington Market

For the past 12 months that we’ve been living in our apartment we’ve been getting regular mail addressed to some guy called Dr Macdonald.

Initially we did the noble thing by crossing out our address and returning them back to the sender, but the letters have just kept on coming and coming, at least once a week without fail. Today my housemate told me he’s gotten sick of returning them so he now makes a point of opening & reading them all before throwing them out!


This reminded me of a similar thing that happened when I lived in London last year. I was living with an American guy who had been in the UK for about 8 years, then one day out of the blue he decided he was going to return to the States. Within two weeks he’d sold everything he owned, packed his bags and was gone. Over the following few months we’d constantly receive mail addressed to him which wouldn’t seem to stop, despite us returning them back, until eventually curiosity got the better of me and I decided to open one of the letters.

I found that it was a final notice from the debt collectors, telling him to cough up the £10,000 he owed the banks, or else see them in court.


Which begs the question… have you ever read someone elses mail and discovered something interesting?

Leave a comment and let me know if you have!