All this discussion about the relative design and merits of three-legged stools (Letters passim) is as nothing compared with the so-called suicide stool, a one-legged stool designed by Alfred Nobel to prevent operators of the nitroglycerin reaction vats – part of the production process of his dynamite – falling asleep and allowing an exothermic runaway to occur, with the consequent explosion ruining everyone’s day.
Danny Tanzey
Thornton Cleveleys, Lancashire
• Graham Thompson needs to be careful referring to the Keuper marl rock formation as a defining “north/south” feature (Letters, 21 October). I was recently admonished by a geology expert for using this term. “We now call it Mercia mudstone,” I was told. But marl or mudstone aside, north of the Trent is True North.
Martin Russell
Nottingham
• Steven Morris’s report on an angler who almost died after he accidentally got a sole fish stuck in his throat (14 October) reminded me of a piece from Gloucestershire Notes and Queries, 1884. In 1763, the Vicar of Arlingham recorded a burial: “Stephen Aldridge, who was suffocated by a flat-fish, which he unadvisedly put betwixt his teeth when taken out of the net; but by a sudden spring it made its way into his throat, and killed him in two minutes”.
Dr Rosemary Smith
University of Bristol
• There is a deep irony in the picture you published on Saturday to illustrate the Museo Ferrari in Bologna (Readers’ tips, Travel). The car was actually built as a Lancia, but Lancia went bust and was forced to give its Grand Prix cars to Ferrari. Despite them being technologically far in advance of his machines, he (allegedly) took them churlishly and stuck his badges on them.
Peter Collins
Bromley, Kent
• Concerning the naming of winter colds (Letters, 23 October), can I now look forward to Flu Falstaff later in the year?
Ron Brewer
Old Buckenham, Norfolk
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