I spent 20 years wandering the world on a small boat meeting seafarers of all kinds. In general conversation I hardly ever heard the female pronoun used to describe any sort of vessel (Museum rocks the boat with stand on gender, 27 April). When it was used it was regarded as whimsy, like calling your car a she.
John Newton
Buxton, Derbyshire
• I learned from Dorothy L Sayers in The Nine Tailors (1934) that church bells, no matter what their name, are all female. Has this changed?
Margaret Waddy
Cambridge
• Have they remembered to book a table at the Ritz for the angels, and is Westminster Council arranging to pave the streets with stars (Odes to the nightingale: Artists celebrate at-risk bird in Berkeley Square, 29 April)? One thing is certain, the whole damn world seems upside down.
Penny Aldred
London
• Please persuade Richard Williams to stop writing about sport and return to writing about music. His piece on Jazz 625 (Black and white magic, G2, 30 April) was the best piece of music writing in the paper for months.
Dr Iain Ferris
Pembrey, Carmarthenshire
• The title of the BBC’s Jazz 625 celebrated the new 625-line screen format, as Richard Williams says; also, the theme tune’s composer, Steve Race, cleverly pitched the first three notes on the sixth, second and fifth notes of the scale.
John Wurr
Kingston, Devon
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