It’s about 45 years ago since the Guardian last ran a lengthy correspondence on growing loofahs (Letters, 1 February). We tried to grow them at the time on our bathroom windowsill but only produced fruit the size of small gherkins – a horticultural triumph but useless for washing purposes. I wonder if global warming would make it worth our while to repeat the experiment? And might loofahs perhaps replace marmalade as your next topic thread?
Jane McAdoo
London
• Your report (‘Big echo chamber’: Mistakes of Sydney’s opera house to be addressed after 47 years, 31 January) brings to mind a comment of the late Sir Thomas Beecham about the Royal Albert Hall: “It’s the only place where a composer can hear the premiere of his work twice.”
Philip Allen
Kentish Town, London
• Don’t let Brexiters score an easy goal by impugning remainers’ knowledge of and love for Britain’s coast. The “defocused white cliffs of Dover” (Letters, 1 February) pictured on the front page of Friday’s Guardian were not a product of genius but rather showed the iconic Seven Sisters, with Belle Tout lighthouse visible close to Beachy Head, some 75 miles by road west of Dover. We in remain-voting Brighton should know.
Michael Dunne
Brighton
• OK, so the film 1917 “cleverly enfolds narrative and character within [its] flow” (Baftas coverage, 3 February), but the question remains: who milked that cow, so shortly before the two soldiers saw it?
Fr Alec Mitchell
Holyhead, Anglesey
• I’ve recently emptied my wormery and, unlike Jonathan Hammonds’ experience (Letters, 1 February), all the Guardian bags came out as intact as the day they went in. Evidently not to the worms’ liking.
Nick Starling
London
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