DEAR Editor - I would like to add my comments to recent letters concerning the closure of two sub-post offices.

Firstly I would like to say a big thank you to Nat and Pru Bayhani who, for the past 17 years, have owned the property known as Sidemoor Post Office and shop.

When the doors shut for trading on September 11, a chapter was closed on Sidemoor's history forever.

The post office was extremely busy on that final day with customers constantly streaming in to wish them both well and to say their goodbyes. I don't think they realised that more than 300 people would be popping in to do exactly that!

Over the past 17 years the community has had two very friendly faces behind the counter, always co-operative and they have often had their ears bent by the customer who was sometimes too eager to chat about their life history!

The building on the corner of Broad Street and Providence Road has been a shop for more than 100 years, and the residents of Sidemoor are hoping this will not become just another empty shop premises in an area already littered with unused commercial buildings.

Shutting at a time when the sub-post office also closed on Market Street has hit the main post office in the High Street very hard. The staff in the High Street are very hard working and one recent Wednesday all windows were staffed and the queue overspilled onto the pavement all morning and was still horrendous into the late afternoon.

Shutting sub-post offices saves money, we are told. But let me tell you a tale of hidden ludicrous costs that the public don't know about.

On October 1 the mechanical calendar displayed high on the post office internal wall read September 31, 2003. A date which does not actually exist.

On pointing this out to staff, they were well aware of the incorrect date, which was confusing customers but they could not change it.

I obviously thought that they were just too busy to alter the calendar and I sympathised with them being so overloaded.

It materialised that none of the existing staff could actually change the date. They were not allowed to! It seems a man has to be called out from some miles away to actually man-handle the calendar! At what cost I ask? It's union jobsworth gone mad.

Bromsgrove is expanding daily with houses and people but all our amenities, medical services and schools remain the same. It's no wonder Bromsgrovians are queuing for everything.

Brenda Whipp

Howard Avenue

Bromsgrove.