Several years ago I bought a box of small toy Easter chicks and sent them in lots of envelopes over a period of a few weeks to my mother, as if they were 'migrating', getting workmates to write the labels and send them so they would have different postmark towns. The idea was for them to be anonymous. Some had several chicks in the envelopes.

They kept arriving at my mother's and provided much amusement, with all but one of them arriving. I also played silly games to keep the postman on his toes, sometimes leaving out the postcode (zip) or putting other typos in the address.

After the migration I visited my mum and she had the chicks everywhere, quite a collection.

Then, about three weeks later, she had one of those cards meaning she would need to visit the depot. So she went, saw the envelope and knew what it was. In this envelope the chick was standing up rather than laying flat, to make the envelope too large for standard letter rate, hence the fine. She paid up.

After hearing this tale I realised I had dodged about 57 bullets, for any of the envelopes could have ended up too large for the letter rate.

At the time the post was affordable, with it not costing £1.25 a letter. The stunt would have easily cost me £100 had I wished to repeat it this year. I would have also run the gauntlet of the fake-forged-stamp malarkey, with it randomly costing my mother £5 just because the Post Office deemed their own stamps-with-QR-codes fraudulent.

It looks like I won't be using the post for a while, which is a pity.