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Once upon a postbag there was postman with the intelligence of a post. That is to say when he was born his brains got delivered elsewhere than inside his head. What was actually inside his head was a bag of gummy bears, posted by Auntie June one very hot summer, which had gotten lost in the mail for quite some time. Luckily those gummy bears had little gummy brains with which he managed to function.

This postman was called Herbert.

Herbert was quite good at delivering the mail and was very dedicated to his job, never a letter went undelivered when it was in Herbert's hands. Of course it might not have been delivered to the right place, or even put through a letterbox, but it got delivered all the same. His obsession with a one hundred percent success rate got quite bad and one day he had to deliver a very important letter, but most of the address had got smudged when he tried to read it in the rain.

“Urgent Delivery – Timbuctoo” was all it said.

He scratched his head for a bit. The name rang a bell but the church was in another country. Some gummy bears were getting married in it.

'Timbuctoo... Timbuctoo' he said to himself.

He got out his mobile phone and searched for Timbuctoo. It pointed him in the direction of a different country. He checked again to make sure there was no Timbuctoo in England but there wasn't. Normally his small route didn't cover other countries and this puzzled Herbert.

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He could pass it on to another mailman, who would put in onto a mail plane, when he got back to the sorting office but the airport was the next stop on his route so he decided to hand deliver it instead.

Not to the postmen at airport, that would have been silly, Herbert caught a plane to Timbuctoo.

As he stepped off the plain he thought to himself that there was a lot more sand in Timbuctoo than in England. It was true it was a sandy place and when he called for a taxi he got a camel. He asked the camel to take him to the mayor of Timbuctoo. The camel turned his head around on his long neck, spat in Herbert's face, then sat down. Herbert decided to try and find the mayor himself but in Timbuctoo nobody looked like a mayor, or at least any mayor that he knew and he didn't know any.

After much walking around Herbert found someone who was in charge, a man who was in charge of Timbuctoo's post office. It was actually less of an office and more of a wooden crate. The man looked at the letter and shook his head.

“Oh no no no no” he said, or at least something that sounded like it.

Herbert took the letter back and put it in his sack. Now he didn't know what to do. He thought that if he opened the envelope it might give him a clue but it would also be against the postman's code. His brain nearly popped pondering how the letter could be read without opening it.

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Then he had the smartest idea his gummy bear brain ever concocted. He would stick his head in the X-Ray machine at the airport and get X-Ray vision! ... No wait that wouldn't work he'd just stick the letter in the machine at the airport and read it! He thought. And this is what he did.

Luckily the man in charge of the X-Ray machine at the airport spoke English and let the postman try his idea. Inside wasn't a letter but a key. He couldn't read a key, unless there was a message engraved on the key. But there wasn't. He thanked the man at the airport and went and sat beneath the desert stars thinking about what to do. Finally he decided he would open the envelope and find the door which the key belonged to, then he would explain what happened to the person who the door belonged to. It wasn't a great plan but it was the only one he could come up with.

That night he began to try every door and every place a key might fit in Timbuctoo. He stuck it in doorways, in cracks in the wall, in anywhere where a key would fit. They didn't have cars doors so he stuck it in a camel and for the second time that day got a faceful of camel spit.

Eventually he gave up. Herbert knew that every postman has an undeliverable letter and he just accepted that this was his. He put the key back in the envelope, put the envelope back in the bag and got back on the plane.

The next day he was walking home tired and fed up, he would get a good night's sleep and tell his boss what had happened. As he walked home he saw a man sat on the doorstep of the house next to his, also looking tired and fed up but he had less sand in his hair.

'What's the matter?' said Herbert.

'Oh I've just moved house and my key was supposed to be in my mailbox but it isn't here. I've been waiting all night' said the man.

'Well I'm a postman, I can help you if you like. I'll have a word with my boss tomorrow. I'll just need your name'

'Oh thank you' said the man, 'my name's Tim'

'And your second name?' asked Herbert taking out an envelope and writing on the back of it.

'Buctoo'

'Buctoo, Tim' said Herbert.

'That's right Tim Buctoo' said Tim.

Something was going on inside Herbert's mind. It took a full five minutes of looking at the name he had written down on the back of the envelope then at the name on the front of the envelope and repeating this action several times before something clicked. It was a light switch. A gummy bear had just turned on a light in a room. It sat down and started thinking about how the two things were related. Five minutes later Herbert went bright red.

'I think I have a letter for you' he said.

Tim was ever so pleased and invited Herbert in for a drink.

'I bet you've never visited Tim Buctoo before' he said.

Herbert shook his head, which was now positively tomato-like, went inside and enjoyed a nice cup of tea.

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