A CHARGE of £2.45 for sending a Christmas present parcel to his niece and nephew in America seemed reasonable to my friend Peter Holme then came the catch.

"Is there a Christmas card inside?" asked the woman on the Post Office counter.

"Yes."

"What have you written on it?"

Puzzled he replied: "Happy Christmas, see you next year."

"In that case the charge will be £5.09," she said.

"Why?"

"There is an international agreement that a maximum of five words are allowed on cards inside a parcel, any more and the charge is doubled," she said.

"What if I had told you there were only five?"

"If customs had opened it they would have sent it straight back to you."

Peter checked with a friend in the Post Office and the counter assistant was quite right.

Ironically he also learned that if he had opened the parcel and sent the card separately the charge would have been £2.45 for the parcel and just £1.09 for the card.

Sounds like bureaucracy gone mad to me.

ADRIAN Legge, of Windermere, says: "I am delighted to read that Friends of the Lake District are campaigning to remove overhead wires. When they've finished here, perhaps they would like to lend a hand in India. Delhi seems like a good place to start."

Good idea several of those annoying Indian call centres could be wiped out at a stroke.