Touching is important for emotional health and communication – we learn touching in the womb before just about anything else (Losing our touch, 8 March). Most touching is with family, of course. But children in care, in foster care or children’s homes are routinely deprived of this – many will not touch another person except by accident for long periods. We need to avoid abusive touching – but stopping all touching is an abuse in itself.
John Freeman
Former director of children’s services, Dudley council
• Although “the beast from the East” (Report, 6 March) and “the pest from the West” have made this a trying winter, it falls far short of the 11-week winter of 1962-63. The Guardian produced a 48-page pull-out as a memorial to the long winter in which cars were driven across the Thames, pack ice formed a quarter of a mile outside Whitstable harbour and at least 49 people died. The Guardian then cost 4 pence. Its writers included Clare Hollingworth, Alistair Cooke, Francis Boyd, John Maddox, Victor Zorza, Richard Crossman, Lord Altringham, Philip Hope-Wallace, Eric Newton and Neville Cardus. Happy days.
Leslie Jones
Cirencester, Gloucestershire
• Are the presenters of Civilisations there to explain the brilliance of the artworks, or the artworks there to explain the brilliance of the presenters (Letters, 6 March)?
Rupert Besley
Newport, Isle of Wight
• My piano teacher taught me that Every Good Boy Deserves Favours, as she whacked my hand with a ruler (Letters, 9 March).
Chris Hughes
Leicester
• Spitting in football is hardly a new phenomenon. Is Tony Wright (Letters, 8 March) too young to remember “Gob of the Month”, a Not The Nine O’Clock News sketch from the early 1980s, which ridiculed spitting in football in the manner of Match of the Day’s Goal of the Month?
Moira Doherty
Reston, Virginia, USA
• Jill Tweedie inspired my youth and early middle age. Michele Hanson accompanied me through my later years. Who will now attend me in my dotage? So glad to know that the dogs will be cared for (Letters, 6 March). But what about the tortoise?
Amanda Rainger
London
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