Of course you can be “fit after 40” (Run for your life!, G2, 8 March). At 65 I’ve started doing the Saturday morning parkrun. This is arguably the most important, largely unsung, public health initiative for decades. Every Saturday morning about 80,000 people across the UK converge on a local park for a 5k run. A couple of hours later, an email arrives with your time, whether it’s a personal best and an age-related score. All ages and all shapes and sizes take part and it’s hugely supportive. After a few weeks I was addicted. It’s a fab way to start the weekend and I’ve lost a stone. Register via www.parkrun.org.uk.
Roger Williams
Nottingham
• Anyone who has been trapped in a queue near a toddler, beet-faced with rage, emitting screams piercing enough to fuse your inner ear bones, will be grateful to the parent who scoops up the little, er, dear, and takes it out of earshot, and sympathise with the shopworker who asks them to do it (John Lewis says sorry to mother asked to leave after child’s tantrum, 8 March). Would that the noise of all the EU referendum’s Violet Elizabeth Botts, “thcreaming and thcreaming” until they are “thick”, be as simply dealt with!
Judith Mackinlay
Manchester
• Fiona Miller asks “Turn all schools into academies: just what is the point?” (Education, 8 March). Well I can think of two, both of which are undoubtedly on the government’s “hidden” agenda: weaken the teaching unions and end national pay scales.
Bill White
Leeds
• If Hillary Clinton is elected president (Opinion, 7 March), will Bill be called the “first gentleman”?
Ken Phillips
Chorley, Lancashire
• Don’t forget church Latin (Letters, 7 March). A former colleague, a Belgian Jesuit, remarked to me that when we had Latin in church we could at least travel anywhere in the world and not have a clue what was going on. I did Latin O-level and my attempts at putting up shelves look more like a surrealist sculpture.
Rev Chris Oxley
Lutterworth, Leicestershire
• Join the debate – email [email protected]
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