Much more than careers advice and role-play are needed to raise the aspirations of young children (Careers advice for two-year-olds, 2 April). As a white, middle-class nursery teacher, I once commented to a three-year-old who was playing at being a teacher: “Perhaps you could be a teacher when you grow up?” “No,” replied the child, who was from a minority community. “Teachers aren’t black.”
Catherine Thompson
London
• To 1960s Kent county council schoolchildren, gypsy tart was food of the gods (Letters, 2 April). As to the origin of the name, I suspect that it was related to the tawny hue of the dish. Gypsy and Romany cream biscuits were chocolate or dark biscuits with a tawny cream. At the time this would have been regarded as an artistic flourish to dress up poverty food made up largely of sugar and carbohydrates. No almond or lemon in it in those days.
Vivien Bailey
St Albans, Hertfordshire
• If you think “veggie disc” sounds unpalatable (Report, 5 April), you should read the list of permitted contents of a meat pie.
Keith Penn
Ely, Cambridgeshire
• No, Gareth Davies, it is indeed “hadaway wi’ ya barra” (Letters, 4 April). The full phrase, according to my Geordie grandmother, was “hadaway wi’ ya barra an’ sell ya mint”.
Jennifer Gale (native Geordie)
Bideford, Devon
• Seen today in the ash woodlands of the Naddle Valley in Westmorland, a single green bracken crozier already six vigorous inches tall. This seems very early (Letters, 4 April). Any views?
Bob Connell
Amberley, West Sussex
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