Re your article (Rent for one-bed flat now takes up half young workers’ pay, 13 June), I worked for the BBC from 1961 to 1971. My pay was £6 15s a week when I started work in Langham Place. Rent for staying in a dormitory at the YWCA in Chelsea was £3 10s a week. I managed to get thrown out and moved into a two-bedroom flat in Notting Hill Gate (pretty rough in ’61) and shared a bedroom as we were five girls. The rent was £3 15s. I never paid less than 50% of my pay in rent until I got married in ’67. So I was still sharing a bedroom and dammit, I still am.
Lynn Wiseman
Lewes, East Sussex
• Patrick Barkham (Notebook, 14 June) suggests that words are beautiful either because they sound beautiful or because they conjure a beautiful image. There are alternatives. My favourite word is “plinth”. Not because the word is beautiful, even less because a plinth is beautiful, but because of the beautiful things you have to do with your mouth, tongue and teeth to pronounce it well.
Stuart Currie
Barnsley, South Yorkshire
• When an assistant asks “contactless?”, as a sixtysomething shopper, I automatically say “yes, you can ‘ching’ it” (Letters, 14 June), as in “ker-ching”, which is the sound the old cash registers made on completing a purchase. I can think of no better.
Stephanie Tickner
London
• May I suggest “waft” (Wireless Automatic Fund Transfer)? Sounds like “banker-speak” to me.
Chris Osborne
West Bridgford, Nottinghamshire
• I assume the irony of the headline in Saturday’s travel section “New UK flights to Montenegro’s unspoilt beaches” (11 June) was intentional.
Matthew Isted
Dorking, Surrey
• Three letters from Wiltshire on Monday (13 June). If we could have one every day, a political revolution may take place in this most Tory of shires.
Roger Day
Wedhampton, Wiltshire
• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com
