Reading your article (Death? Why our brains tell us it only happens to other people, 19 October) and the letter from Chris Seidal (22 October) regarding entering the “obituary belt”, I find it strangely comforting in my increasingly crowded social, funereal calendar to view myself as in the rectum of life, waiting to be ejected into the great lavatory pan of eternity. We all have our ways of becoming comfortable with our own mortality, and the enteric analogy mirrors our transit through the vale of tears. The egg sandwiches also help.
David Makin
Dobcross, Greater Manchester
• The letters about death reminded me of a letter Billy Graham received from a man who said: “I could stand living with my wife in heaven for 100,000 years or so, but can’t face living with her for eternity.” Can’t remember what advice Billy gave.
John Richards
Oxford
• Your editorial (22 October) ponders the return of James Joyce’s ashes to Dublin, the city of his birth. Last summer, during a 150-minute open-top bus tour of the city, I did not hear the author’s name mentioned once. I wonder, do Dubliners want him back?
Dick Curtis
Gloucester
• There isn’t much to smile about at Swansea station car park. But the signs put up earlier this year, since taken down, had that effect: “Pay before existing” (Letters, 23 October).
Richard Daugherty
Swansea
• Wouldn’t it be a refreshing change to see Mr Cummings leaving No 10 Downing Street (Report, 22 October)?
Richard McClean
Marple Bridge, Greater Manchester
• Please may we have a picture of Dominic Cummings emerging from church, preferably in the company of Phoebe Waller-Bridge?
David Cooper
Nafferton, East Riding of Yorkshire
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