A reader wrote to me last week with a cri de coeur regarding the disappearance of the one-year passport.

We used to be able to get one at the Post Office for some quite small sum - my brain resolutely refuses to remind me when it disappeared or how much it cost but I do recall that it was not about to break the bank.

This lady is, as she so charmingly quoted the ageless comedienne Dora Bryan, "seventy several" but not very mobile following some recent problems.

Thus when her passport expired last June she decided that it would be a waste of money to renew it as she could no longer face the inevitable delays at airports and the cattle-like huddle of the aeroplane seats, having lived through a more elegant time when travellers were somewhat more cherished than they are today.

However, as she sat and contemplated her life without the possession of a passport, she wondered what she would do if, to quote her letter "a knight in the proverbial shining armour came to try and whisk me away to an island paradise and I had to refuse because of the lack of a passport".

On reflection, and following an invitation from a friend in France to join her for lunch, she felt she could not let that remote possibility (or the lunch invitation) signal defeat and decided to apply for a new passport.

Remember it is now more than ten years since she last applied and what subsequently floored her was the cost. It costs £28 for a full ten-year passport, then there is the new photo, the postage, not to mention all the hassle and, as she pointed out, the chances of her getting ten years worth out of the new document were a bit slim.

This was where the question of the one-year passport arose. Is it not possible, she asks, for people of our generation to have one-year renewable passports, or alternatively be allowed to travel to other EU countries without the use of a passport at all, merely some documentations to prove we are who we say we are.

After all, who would bother at our age to pretend to be Marilyn Monroe, and what's worse, who would believe us?

It seems to me she has a point here although I've no doubt at all that if approached, the powers that be would find some EU Directive or some other reason to say "no". It looked as though the lunch date in France was receding into a fog of bureaucracy as well as qualifying for one of the most expensive lunches in her calendar.

Her letter ended on a happier note, as the PS told me she had capitulated, made a bid for a few more years of her somewhat adventurous life and got the passport.

No doubt in another ten years she will be applying again - she's obviously that kind of a lady! But the letter started me off thinking about what other charges annoy older people and top of the list was the charge for a driving licence once you reach 70.

It doesn't seem to be a logical charge since it costs no more to process an application for a 70-year-old than it does for a 69-year-old. But who ever thought bureaucracy was logical! No doubt I shall be told the Third Age should be happy with free TV licences, bus passes and a heating allowance.

Whatever happened to the spirit of adventure?