IN Dante's vision of hell it says in large letters over the door: ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE. It ought to say the same over the door of every post office in London.

I don't know how things are in the North-East these days, but in my neck of the woods it doesn't matter what time of day you go for stamps or to post a parcel, the queue is always backed up to the door and sometimes out into the street.

So you stand and wait... and wait and wait. From time to time a recorded message says such as "Cashier number nine, please" and some lost and hungry soul from the front of the queue ventures forth to grovel for overdue attention.

Now you might think that by the announcement CASHIER NUMBER NINE PLEASE that there were cashiers numbers one to eight. Whom do you think you're kidding? Cashiers one to three and five to seven are missing and so, to cope with the throng of metropolitan customers, only counters four and nine are open.

Moreover, when I go to the post office it's usually for something comparatively uncomplicated such as buying a few stamps or posting a parcel. Most other people seem to go there in order to make out their last will and testament or otherwise process some transaction of business so intricate and nebulous that they're standing with the cashier for half and hour or so.

And when you get to the counter it's not straightforward. I've just published a book of my sermons and lectures. I wanted to send out 20 copies separately - including, I should say in high hopes of a review, one to the editor of The Echo. So I enquired how much each little parcel would cost. "Eighty pence, please".

All right, 20 times 80p is not exactly the higher mathematics or a proposition from Wittgenstein, is it? I stood there for a full ten minutes while the cashier - with the help (hindrance?) of pencil, paper and electronic calculator came to the not unexpected conclusion that 20 times 80p is £16.

And then there's mail delivery. Or I should say perhaps, no there isn't mail delivery - not at a reasonable hour of the day anyhow. We've all just been told here in the City that "for your convenience" the daily deliveries of mail have been "amalgamated": which, being translated, means they've scrapped the second post.

So nowadays our mail arrives about one o'clock. Well that makes life difficult. I mean, part of my job is to visit parishioners who are ill or bereaved. Naturally, these folk don't always get out of bed at the crack of dawn, so I've been in the habit of doing my sick visits in the afternoon. I used to answer my post in the morning, but now I can't because it hasn't arrived. So all my correspondence is a day late.

Blackwells bookshop in Oxford posted a book to me 11 days ago and it still hasn't arrived. I enquired and they told me there was a strike. I'm surprised they've got the gumption even to organise a strike. The question arises: how can they tell the difference between when they're working and when they're on strike? Forget the railways and the banks, the last bastion of Stalinist bureaucratic inefficiency and sheer rudeness is the post office.

* Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.