As a rational atheist, I am certain that warnings founded on superstition are nonsense and deserve to be ignored. But this year, please could the staff at Buckingham Palace, Downing Street, Trafalgar Square etc ensure that every bauble, every shred of tinsel and every pine needle is taken down, packed away and cleared up by 6 January.
Dominic Rayner
Leeds
• One way to deal with lockdown at the dreariest and most depressing time of the year is to forget Twelfth Night and keep the Christmas decorations up until it is over.
John Cundill
London
• I too am fond of keeping old copies of the Guardian (Letters, 4 January). They are invaluable for lighting the open wood fire that I burn occasionally in the winter. I recently enjoyed putting a match to the one (19 December) containing a report that warned me about the dangers to my health from particulate matter resulting from the fire.
Stephen Smith
Glasgow
• I was pleased to see that you categorised me as part of a “fringe” market (UK music streaming hits a high note amid the lows of Covid, 4 January), although I’d have preferred the epithet “discerning”. Some of us have never stopped buying LPs.
Gordon Blunt
Market Harborough, Leicestershire
• “Voice notes” (Covid has made ‘voice notes’ the perfect way to stay connected, 3 January) are not the exclusive innovation of always-online iGen youth. Crusty old baby boomers can do voice notes too – except in my day we used to call it “leaving a message on your answering machine”.
Robert Frazer
Salford, Lancashire
