WHEN North-East pensioner Margaret Nayman was told a cheque was in the post, she didn't expect to have to wait more than two years for it to arrive.

In fact, she forgot all about it, until an envelope from Royal Mail landed on her doorstep in Darlington on Monday morning.

Inside was another envelope, dated May 24, 2002, and containing a cheque for £38 from the Nationwide Building Society.

"I got a surprise," said the 82-year-old widow. "I read through the letter twice and thought 'what are they on about?'. I had completely forgotten about the cheque even being sent to me.

"Now I'll have to go to the building society and get the cheque re-dated so that I can put it in my account."

Mrs Nayman said there was no explanation for why the letter took so long to arrive, though there was a note on how she could make a complaint about the delay.

"It doesn't instill me with a great deal of confidence about Royal Mail," she said. "It could have been something really important.

"It's probably about a mile-and-half from the building society to my house, so they would have been better off hand-delivering it."

A spokeswoman for Royal Mail said: "We apologise to this customer for the delay. It's impossible to speculate as to why it would have been delayed, but it's highly unlikely that the item was held up in our system for that amount of time."

Nationwide declined to comment.