At this time of year I always wonder what happens to the flesh of the pumpkins. The number bought is boggling. Just how much is cooked and eaten and how much discarded? How many American-style pumpkin pies could be baked – because this is where the tradition of the pumpkin for Halloween has come from? In my day, it was the humble turnip and my mother would serve turnip mash for dinner that day.
Jean Curry
Huddersfield
• Milton Keynes (Report, 28 October) may have a greater obstacle than Brexit in its bid to become a European City of Culture in 2023 – it isn’t actually a city.
Ian Joyce
Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire
• Several examples of literary “graveyard voices” have been cited (Letters, 26 October), but none of them English. Thomas Hardy’s poetry is full of such hauntings: eg, Friends beyond, I have lived with shades and most familiar, Channel Firing, where the grave-dwellers are disturbed by gunfire in 1914: “And many a skeleton shook his head. / Instead of preaching forty year, / My neighbour Parson Thirdly said, / I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer.”
Richard Allen
Cambridge
• What a good idea (NHS may rent spare rooms to ease bed crisis, 25 October). This could be extended to other overstretched services. Prisons are overcrowded. I have a small, spare bedroom. I could put a bolt on the door.
Andy McGuffog
London
• Page 49 of this week’s Guide (28 October) states: “Yes, it’s spring again: don’t forget to put your clocks forward an hour tonight.” Surely, this was only meant to be in the Sans Serif edition?
Mike Cobb
Stanford-le-Hope, Essex
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• The second letter was amended on 30 October 2017. Due to an editing error an earlier version said Milton Keynes was in Bedfordshire. This has been corrected to Buckinghamshire.
