On a short weekend break to Wrexham, I was shocked to be confronted by a fully lit silver Christmas tree, complete with faux presents, when we went for a pub meal at The Beeches. A sign proclaimed “124 days to go”, so I can report that the provinces are only 23 days behind Oxford street (Jingle bells in July as Selfridges opens Christmas shop 147 days early, 1 August). I naturally requested Christmas pudding for dessert, but none was available.
Martin Whittle
Sheffield
• Kiran Aldridge (Why I’ll be spending my golden years with my golden girls, 26 August), we all get lonelier as our friends and family move away or die. We in the Older Women’s Co-Housing Project are avoiding just that by creating a new community in which 26 of us have individual flats but share communal facilities and responsibilities. We each respect the other’s privacy but are there for each other when needed. It’s wonderful.
Shirley Meredeen
London
• Can it really be that the Guardian is giving its third huge free puff to Bake Off (Bake Off: new presenters, a new channel, but it’s still the sweetest show on the box, 30 August) while relegating the potential run-up to nuclear war to page 8?
Helen Oldfield
Deddington, Oxfordshire
• I’m wondering when this period when “things just felt a bit more stable” that Zoe Williams describes (At last, Labour has fully entered the Brexit debate, 28 August), was. I grew up in the shadow of the cold war with the prospect of nuclear annihilation. My parents had the rise of fascism leading to the second world war, while my grandparents had the first world war in which my grandfather was gassed. Stability, what stability?
Simon Geller
Sheffield
• It’s not only the British who get it wrong (Try not to speak like a tabloid editor on holiday, G2, 30 August). A car park dispute in Brittany last year ended in laughter when a Frenchman said to my husband “I say, old chap, be reasonable!”
Mu Tucker
Leeds
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