During the run up to this Easter I sent my mother a varying amount of toy Easter chicks through the post, as if they were on a migration. There were 165 in total and I deliberately wrote all of the addresses differently to see if they would get through or not. I also got friends and colleagues to write the address so that handwriting was far from consistent. Postcode was definitely optional and to annoy my mother I added the address of the nearby council estate to the address.

All but one of them made 'the migration' in a timely fashion. However, a fortnight later my mum had a 'collect from the sorting office' note from the postman (or post service officer, in these PC times). This was for the last chick. By some accident this particular chick was standing up rather than lying down in the envelope making the package too large for 1st class mail. She had to pay ~£6 for the safe arrival of the last (165th) chick.

Incidentally they were all named and I emailed my father who could be expected on a given day. The first letters of their names obviously made up a 'happy easter' letter slightly longer than a 'tweet'.

This little experiment in novelty gift giving was dependent on those employed to manually sort the mail and their sharp brains. Yep, I deliberately gave them the run around! But it was all worth it. I for one will be sad when such prank-art-projects-via-post are no longer possible because the machines will have fully taken over.