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In praise of the stillness of my life as a seventysomething

<span>Photograph: Peter Byrne/PA</span>
Photograph: Peter Byrne/PA

Would it be unfair to suggest that the cabinet’s “do or die” social care meeting was cancelled (Report, 21 June) because Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock still have no idea what to “do” and consider that the “die” bit was quite adequately covered in the first weeks of the pandemic?
Mike Hine
Kingston upon Thames, London

• Being a non-active seventysomething can be good (Letters, 22 June)! After a busy life, for the last decade I have been grounded by a painful foot. I love the stillness, the emptiness, and watching the skies and the seasons change from day to day.
Rosa Davis
Stroud, Gloucestershire

• I was so cheered by this morning’s Country diary, so grateful thanks to Mary Montague. I enjoyed a prewar Essex childhood (everything from rooks to nightingales), and I now live in a Buckinghamshire beech wood, so all change. Happily, birds don’t know about lockdown, for which I am profoundly grateful.
Ruth Baden
Seer Green, Buckinghamshire

• I don’t know about birds speaking other languages (Letters, 20 June), but here in south-east Kent, our collared doves keep repeating “Marcel Proust, Marcel Proust”. Are they in search of lost time in our continuing semi-lockdown?
David Wheatley
Margate, Kent

• What a lot of rubbish about complicated hiccups cures (Letters, 23 June). Try swallowing a teaspoonful of sugar (it works).
Hilary Clarkson
Darlington, Country Durham

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