My parents have been together for 51 years and loved every minute of it. Unfortunately, my Dad has been in a home since 2011, having been diagnosed with Alzheimer's eight years ago. When I visit him with my mum, who sees him three times a week, his face lights up when he sees her walk through the door. He can't talk, can't feed himself, can't walk – can't do anything, really – but he does know that she belongs to him, somehow. Their love is one of the most incredible things I have ever had the privilege to witness.
Fran Schindler
Frankfurt, Germany
My grandparents were together until they died in their late 90s. At their golden wedding anniversary, when asked what kept them together all this time, my grandmother said, "Scrabble". They played every night, and it obviously worked wonders.
Emma O'Dowd
Girona, Spain
Three Decades Later, Back In The Game… was brilliant. From a fellow fiftysomething, I wish Candida Crewe heartfelt good luck, but judging by her eloquence, good looks and wit, she will not be on the market very long anyway.
Zara Wheeler
Esher, Surrey
It's incredibly hard to date when you're over 50. I've found internet dating to be particularly disappointing, because it's all about what you look like (in the initial stages, at least). As the years go by (which they seem to do with shocking rapidity these days), the mathematics of being single make things more difficult. Take the number of single people of your approximate age and your sexual orientation: deduct those who are married or otherwise in a permanent partnership; those who are looking for somebody hot and 15 years younger; those who are "players" or looking for a nursemaid; and those who are single and perfectly happy about it. In my case, that seems to leave about three single fiftysomething straight men, none of whom finds me attractive.
Name and address supplied
Thank you for Candida Crewe's piece. I had really begun to lose hope, and now have none at all.
Nigel Stewart
Lytham St.Anne's
So, location-independent livers are to be pitied (Your View, 23 August, first letter) or bitterly resented (second letter)? But not simply respected or accepted for living in one of the many ways possible in 2014. Guardian readers, huh? Such empathy. Such tolerance.
Victoria Bainbridge
Darmstadt, Germany
Thank you, Dr Petra Meier: she's one of a handful of experts whose explanation I've understood since this column was introduced. I'm 41.
Kerry York
Anstey, Leicester
To The Man With Breasts, please ask your GP if you can get surgery on the NHS. If your case is really severe, as was a friend's teenage son's, despite him not being enormously overweight, there's a chance you can get this seen to. It was a bit of a long haul, but now he can go on the beach without a T-shirt and has been going out with a lovely girl for two years. Good luck.
Name and address supplied
I enjoyed Reece Shearsmith's Q&A, but as for the thing he says he most dislikes about his appearance (his whole head), I have always quite fancied him.
Ellie Frazier
Hook Norton, Oxfordshire
As a Lancashire-born man of a certain age now living outside the Palatine county due to Tory restructuring of county boundaries, I share much with Lucy Mangan's father. I wonder whether the Jade Plug-in scent of "parched peas" referred to the aroma of their boiling, or to the unforgettable "fragrance" emitted during digestion. If the latter, greater love hath no woman for her father.
Vincent Waldron
Liverpool
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