Would-be motorcycle stuntwoman has job application returned – 48 years after sending it

Tizi Hodson showing off her motorcycling skills
Tizi Hodson showing off her motorcycling skills. She applied for a job as a motorbike stuntwoman

A woman has had a job application from the 1970s returned to her after a postal delay of nearly 50 years.

Tizi Hodson, 70, was in her early twenties when she posted an application letter for her dream job as a motorcycle stunt rider in January 1976.

She never heard from the company, but 48 years later, her application has been returned to her topped with an anonymous handwritten note explaining that the letter  had been found behind a drawer in the Post Office.

“How they found me when I’ve moved house 50-odd times, and even moved countries four or five times, is a mystery,” Ms Hodson, from Gedney Hill, Lincs, told the BBC.

“It means so much to me to get it back all this time later. I remember very clearly sitting in my flat in London typing the letter.”

She added: “Every day, I looked for my post but there was nothing there and I was so disappointed because I really, really, wanted to be a stunt rider on a motorcycle.”

Tizi Hodson with the letter
Ms Hodson was amazed to find out why she had never had a reply to her application for her dream job

Despite waiting years for a response on the role, Ms Hodson was not put off and went on to successfully apply for similarly adrenaline-fuelled jobs.

She moved to Africa and worked as a snake handler and horse whisperer.

Tizi Hodson at the controls of a biplane
Would-be stunt motorcyclist Tizi Hodson finally found work in another daredevil occupation as an aerobatic pilot

Over the course of her life, she also learned to fly and became an aerobatic pilot, as well as a flying instructor.

Ms Hodson does not know who ensured the letter reached her. The handwritten note read: “Late delivery by Staines Post Office. Found behind a draw [sic]. Only about 50 years late.”

Ms Hodson said of her original application: “I was very careful not to let people who were advertising for a stunt rider know that I was female, or I thought I would have had no chance of even getting an interview,” she said.

“I even stupidly told them I didn’t mind how many bones I might break as I was used to it.”

The note enclosed with the returned job application
The note enclosed with the returned job application

A Royal Mail spokesman said: “Incidents like this happen very occasionally – it would appear someone has found the letter and put it back into the postal system.

“Once an item is in our network then it will be delivered to the address on the letter.”

The letter is not the first item that appears to have spent decades in the postal system.

In 2021, a wartime postcard arrived in Liverpool more than 77 years after it was first posted.

William Myler Caldwell, known as Bill, sent the card to his uncle in 1943, after his first week of training with the Royal Navy.

His daughter, Jane Eales, joked at the time that her grandmother would have been “furious” that he had written to his uncle instead of his parents, and it was lucky the card had only just shown up.

Another undelivered postcard took 121 years after it was posted. The Christmas-themed card was delivered to Swansea Building Society’s Cradock Street branch in August this year, even though it was originally sent in 1903.

At the time, the Royal Mail said it was likely the postcard was “put back into” its system, rather than being “lost in the post for over a century”.