Many thanks to the contributors to the Country diary. During a year with so much bad news and restrictions on travel it has been pure joy to read details of changes in nature from different corners of the British Isles – often expressed in delightful prose.
Angela Chronnell
London
• I’d like to reassure your contributor (Letters, 18 December) that there is no shame in being lonely. Many of us who are profoundly deaf, unable to hear the phone or music, only the hammering of tinnitus day after day, find this time of year even worse every year. Family and friends are far away. It takes so much courage to manage each day and sometimes the unexpected will be welcome. I have a rule. I don’t get out of bed until I have one clue in the cryptic crossword!
Jean Jackson
Seer Green, Buckinghamshire
• I was disappointed to read two Open University academics still perpetuating the myth that construction jobs are for boys and caring jobs are for girls (Letters, 15 December). Vast numbers of jobs in industry are carried out as competently by women as by men.
Beryl Harrison
(Retired civil engineer) Penrith, Cumbria
• My daughter and partner moved house last Thursday from Putney to Berkshire. This meant: Thursday, tier 3; Friday, tier 2; Saturday, tier 3; Sunday, tier 4. Is this a record?
Ian Thompson
Riding Mill, Northumberland
• Emma Brockes feels “docile submission” towards bearded men (Digested week, 18 December). Is this a common reaction? Perhaps some regular correspondent could tell us.
Brian Smith
Berlin, Germany
