Re the importance of handwashing in preventing the transmission of Covid (Letters, 14 July), when we were on honeymoon in Portugal 20 years ago, every cafe and every restaurant had a handbasin, soap and towels for customers to use near the entrance. Not tucked away and inaccessible in the loos, through two doors or up or down a flight of stairs. A very simple thing which it would be sensible to copy. And much more sustainable than endless plastic bottles of sanitiser.
Shayne Mary Mitchell
Cambridge
• In this dehumanised digital age, my husband and I (both in our 90s) took great pleasure in Virginia Spiers’ country diary (14 July). We, in the past, have been in our boat upriver from Calstock. Luckily, we still had to hand a 1:25,000 first series Ordnance Survey map of the Tamar and Tavy valleys, and were able to revisit and remember the sights she described. Our thanks.
Enid Colston
Birmingham
• When we lived in the Oxfordshire village of Nettlebed and the then defence secretary, Michael Heseltine, was a near (but unmet) neighbour, a discreet notice in the butcher’s shop in the high street read: “All of our sausages contain Conservatives.” No misprint there (Letters, 14 July).
Maggie Lloyd
Oxford
• Your long read on interplanetary quarantine (13 July) was prefigured very precisely in Arthur C Clarke’s 1961 short story Before Eden.
Tom Dawkes
Dinas Powys, Vale of Glamorgan
• Neologisms are becoming a pingdemic. I blame Brexit.
Jude Carr
London
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