Inspiration

I'm a bit stuck at the moment. So today I browsed fictionpress.com (a daughter of fanfiction.net, where I read a lot of Harry Potter fanfiction - there, I admitted it!).

As this story will be Fantasy I had a look at their Fantasy section. I haven't read much yet, but what I've read hasn't really been that inspiring.
And I'm afraid if I like something I won't be able to leave it out of my story...

I saw Diana's post on First Lines today, over at Compuserve, and gave it a try. I hadn't even considered the beginning before, but I sat down and thought on it a bit, and I guess I got something, I can work with.

So how do you like this?:

Receiving a letter with the government crest on it was always a bad thing; but this was exponentially worse.