James Rebanks’ superb review of last summer in the Lake District (Camper vans, crowds, hanging dog poo bags: can the British countryside cope this summer?, 26 June) posed implicit challenges to the national park authority. One challenge they have always ducked is traffic management. They could start with coaches. Last summer we were free of these behemoths, totally unsuited to narrow, twisting roads. When two meet head-on, the ensuing jams can last for hours.
Alison Matthews
Coniston, Cumbria
• I was in hospital having my appendix out when I got an attack of hiccups (Letters, 29 June). I asked a nurse if there was any cure. “Not really,” she said, “it will eventually go away on its own. We recently had a patient who had hiccups for four days.” So what did they do to make it stop? “Nothing, really,” she assured me airily, “he just died.” My own hiccups stopped instantly.
Brian Shuel
London
• Two questions always work as an instant cure for hiccups: (1) Could you let me have that £50 I lent you? (2) Hiccups gone?
Di Oliver
Milton Keynes
• Truncated proverbs tell us that “familiarity breeds” and that “people who live in glass houses shouldn’t” (Letters, 1 July).
Martyn Wilson
Malvern, Worcestershire
• Congratulations to Labour’s Kim Leadbeater on her election as Batley and Spen’s MP. May she and her constituents go on to demonstrate that, in her late sister’s words, “we have far more in common than that which divides us”.
Austen Lynch
Garstang, Lancashire
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